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AT SCHOOL IN THE 
PROMISED LAND 

OR 

THE STORY OF A 
LITTLE IMMIGRANT 

BY 

MARY ANTIN 



HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO 

(Cbe fitoeitfibe pres£ Cambscibae 



T ^x \^K\r/r^//rr r rii£JLijui 







Price, paper, 15 cents; linen, 25 cents. 



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RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES 



1. Longfellow's Evangeline. 

2. Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish. 

3. Dramatization of Miles Standish. 

4. Whittier's Snow-Bound, etc. 

5. Whittier's Mabel Martin. 

6. Holmes's Grandmother's Story. 

7. 8, 9. Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair. 

10. Hawthorne's Biographical Series. 

11. Longfellow's Children's Hour, etc. 

12. Outlines — Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, 

Lowell. 
13, 14. Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. 
15. Lowell's Under the Old Elm, etc. 
4S Bayard Taylor's Lars. 
17, 18. Hawthorne's Wonder-Book. 
19, 20. Franklin's Autobiography. 

21. Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, etc. 

22, 23. Hawthorne's Tangle wood Tales. 

24. Washington's Farewell Addresses, etc. 

25, 26. Longfellow's Golden Legend. 

27. Thoreau's Forest Trees, etc. 

28. Burroughs's Birds and Bees. 

29. Hawthorne's Little Daffydowndilly, etc. 

30. Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal, etc. 

31. Holmes's My Hunt after the Captain, etc. 

32. Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech, etc. 
33-35. Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. 

36. Burroughs's Sharp Eyes, etc. 

37. Warner's A-Hunting of the Deer, etc. 

38. Longfellow's Building of the Ship, etc. 

39. Lowell's Books and Libraries, etc. 

40. Hawthorne's Tales of the White Hills. 

41. Whittier's Tent on the Beach, etc. 

42. Emerson's Fortune of the Republic, etc. 

43. Bryant's Ulysses among the Phaeacians. 

44. Edgeworth's Waste not, Want not, etc. 

45. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. 

46. Old Testament Stories. 

47. 48. Scudder's Fables and Folk Stories. 
49, 50. Andersen's Stories. 

51. Irving' s Rip Van Winkle, etc. 

52. Irving's The Voyage, etc. 

53. Scott's Lady of the Lake. 

54. Bryant's Thanatopsis, etc. 

55. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. 

56. Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration. 

57. Dickens's Christmas Carol. 

58. Dickens's Cricket on the Hearth. 

59. Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading. 

60. 61. The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. 

62. Fiske's War of Independence. 

63. Longfellow's Paul Revere 's Ride, etc. 
64-G6. Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare. 

67. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. 

68. Goldsmith's Deserted Village, etc. 

69. Hawthorne's The Old Manse, etc. 

70. 71. Selection from Whittier's Child Life. 

72. Milton's Minor Poems. 

73. Tennyson's Enoch Arden, etc. 

74. Gray's Elegy ; Cowper's John Gilpin. 

75. Scudder's George Washington. 

76. Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality. 

77. Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night, etc. 

(See also 



78. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. 

79. Lamb's Old China, etc. 

80. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner; Campbe 

Lochiel's Warning, etc. 

81 . Holmes' s Autocrat of the Breakf ast-Tal 

82. Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales. 

83. Eliot's Silas Marner. 

84. Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. 

85. Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days. 

86. Scott's Ivanhoe. 

87. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. 

88. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

89. 90. Swift's Gulliver's Voyages. 

91. Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gabl 

92. Burroughs's A Bunch of Herbs, etc. 

93. Shakespeare's As You Like It. 

54. Milton's Paradise Lost. Books 1-IIi. 
95-98. Cooper's Last of the Mohicans. 
99. Tennyson's Coming of Arthur, etc. 

100. Burke's Conciliation with the Colonies 

101. Pope's Iliad. Books I, VI, XXII, XXI 

102. Macaulay's Johnson and Goldsmith 

103. Macaulay's Milton. 

104. Macaulay's Addison. 

105. Carlyle's Essay on Burns. 

106. Shakespeare's Macbeth. 

107. 108. Grimms' Tales. 

109. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 

110. De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe. 

111. Tennyson's Princess. 

112. Cranch's ^neid. Books I-III. 

113. Poems from Emerson. 

114. Peabody's Old Greek Folk Stories. 

115. Browning's Pied Piper of Hamelin, etc 

116. Shakespeare's Hamlet. 

117. 118. Stories from the Arabian Nights. 
119, 120. Poe's Poems and Tales. 

121. Speech by Hayne on Foote's Resolutioi 

122. Speech by Webster in Reply to Hayne, 

123. Lowell's Democracy, etc. 

124. Aldrich's The Cruise of the Dolphin. 

125. Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. 

126. Ruskin's King of the Golden River, etc 

127. Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, etc. 

128. Byron's Prisoner of Chillon, etc. 

129. Plato's Judgment ot Socrates. 

130. Emerson's The Superlative, etc. 

131. Emerson's Nature, etc. 

132. Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum, etc. 

133. Schurz's Abraham Lincoln. 

134. Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. 

135. Chaucer's Prologue. 

136. Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, etc. 

137. Bryant's Iliad. Bks. I, VI, XXII, XXI~ 

138. Hawthorne's The Custom House, etc. 

139. Howells's Doorstep Acquaintance, etc. 

140. Thackeray's Henry Esmond. 

141. Higginson's Three Outdoor Papers. 

142. Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. 

143. Plutarch's Alexander the Great. 

144. Scudder's The Book of Legends. 

145. Hawthorne's The Gentle Boy, etc. 

146. Longfellow's Giles Corey. 

back covers.) 




W$t Kitoersfoe literature Series? 

AT SCHOOL 
m THE PROMISED LAM) 

OR 

THE STORY OF A LITTLE 

IMMIGRANT 



BY 

MARY ANTIN 




BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 



ETvfa. 

.5' 



COPYRIGHT, I9I I AND I912, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



HAY *m$ 



®t)t XUbergfte $re$stf 

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 

APR 29 1916 



FOREWORD 

When Mary Antin, some years ago, wrote The 
Promised Land, the newspapers and educators of 
the country not only reviewed it enthusiastically, but 
emphasized particularly the reasons why teachers 
should use parts, at least, of this book — so different 
from the ordinary school reading — in their classes. 
Superintendent Maxwell, of the New York Public 
Schools, for one, pointed to its great lesson " that 
education and social influence may triumph over the 
obstacles of heredity and the circumstances of en- 
vironment." Others remarked that besides explain- 
ing to Americans the experiences, the hopes, and the 
problems of immigrants, the author reminded the 
native-born of their priceless heritage of liberty and 
opportunity, and stirred a new inspiration for its 
preservation and increase by the present generation. 
It was further shown that, in addition to making 
truer Americans of all who read it thoughtfully, the 
book had a special message to teachers in its amaz- 
ing revelation of the power that lies in a teacher's 
hands, and of the results that attend a wise use of 
this power. 

In The Promised Land, Mary Antin tells the 
story of her own life : how she was born in Polotzk, 
within the Jewish Pale in Russia; how her father 
was brought up in all the learning of the Hebrews, 
but without a trade, and so became a dreamer of 
dreams with little power, though abundant will, to 
fight the battle of life for his wife and children ; how 
as a child she suffered agonies from fear of persecu- 



iv FOREWORD 

tion from her Gentile neighbors in Polotzk and from 
the officials of the Czar — agonies doubtless intensi- 
fied by a powerful imagination ; how her mother ran 
the little business on which the family depended for 
a living, until there was no business to run ; how 
her father emigrated to America and after three 
years sent for his family ; how the great journey was 
made from Polotzk to Boston ; how financial mis- 
fortune pursued the family in Boston ; how her elder 
sister must needs go to work to keep the wolf from 
the door; how the family endured the miseries of one 
tenement-house after another, until at last they found 
comfort in a cottage of their own ; how the father 
and mother made every sacrifice that their gifted 
daughter might go through the public schools, the 
Girls' Latin School, and at last college; how she 
frequented the public library ; and finally, how she 
came into her own spiritually and intellectually. 

At School in the Promised Land is, as its title 
indicates, a selection of those chapters which tell the 
story of Mary Antin's school days. It has been pre- 
pared by the author in response to many requests 
from educators throughout the country, and is offered 
by the publishers with entire confidence that wher- 
ever it is read the optimism of teachers and the 
ambition and patriotism of pupils will be greatly 
stimulated. 

The Publishers. 



CONTENTS 

I. In the Beginning 1 

II. The Boundaries Stretch 6 

III. A Great Adventure 14 

IV. First Impressions 26 

V. A Seaside Episode 32 

i 

VI. School at Last 38 

VII. Initiation 45 

VIII. "My Country" 52 

IX. In Newspaper Row 60 

i 

i X. A Number of Things 68 

I XI. Tarnished Laurels 79 

XII. Dover Street 87 

XIII. A Kingdom in the Slums 95 

Glossary 103 



AT SCHOOL IN 
THE PKOMISED LAND 

CHAPTER I 

IN THE BEGINNING 

Two little girls dressed in their best, shining from 
their curls to their shoes. One little girl has rosy 
cheeks, the other has staring eyes. Rosy-Cheeks car- 
ries a carpet bag; Big-Eyes carries a new slate. 
Hand in hand they go into the summer morning, so 
happy and pretty a pair that it is no wonder people 
look after them, from window and door; and that 
other little girls, not dressed in their best and carry- 
ing no carpet bags, stand in the street gaping after 
them. 

Let the folks stare ; no harm can come to the little 
sisters. Did not grandmother tie pepper and salt 
into the corners of their pockets, to ward off the evil 
eye ? The little maids see nothing but the road ahead, 
so eager are they upon their errand. Carpet bag and 
slate proclaim that errand: Rosy -Cheeks and Big- 
Eyes are going to school. 

I have no words to describe the pride with which 
my sister and I crossed the threshold of Isaiah the 
Scribe. Hitherto we had been to heder, to a rebbe ; 
now we were to study with a lehrer^ a secular teacher. 
There was all the difference in the world between the 
two. The one taught you Hebrew only, which every 
girl learned ; the other could teach Yiddish and Rus- 
sian and, some said, even German ; and how to write 



2 r AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

a letter, and how to do sums without a counting- 
frame, just on a piece of paper; accomplishments 
which were extremely rare among girls in Polotzk. 
But nothing was too high for the grandchildren of 
Raphael the Russian ; 1 they had " good heads," every- 
body knew. So we were sent to Reb' Isaiah. 

My first school, where I was so proud to be re- 
ceived, was a hovel on the edge of a swamp. The 
schoolroom was gray within and without. The door 
was so low that Reb' Isaiah had to stoop in passing. 
The little windows were murky. The walls were bare, 
but the low ceiling was decorated with bundles of 
goose quills stuck in under the rafters. A rough 
table stood in the middle of the room, with a long 
bench on either side. That was the schoolroom com- 
plete. In my eyes, on that first morning, it shone 
with a wonderful light, a strange glory that pene- 
trated every corner, and made the stained logs fair as 
tinted marble; and the windows were not too small 
to afford me a view of a large new world. 

Room was made for the new pupils on the bench, 
beside the teacher. We found our inkwells, which 
were simply hollows scooped out in the thick table 
top. Reb 5 Isaiah made us very serviceable pens by 
tying the pen points securely to little twigs ; though 
some of the pupils used quills. The teacher also ruled 
our paper for us, into little squares, like a surveyor's 
notebook. Then he set us a copy, and we copied, one 
letter in each square, all the way down the page. All 
the little girls and the middle-sized girls and the 
pretty big girls copied letters in little squares, just 
so. There were so few of us that Reb' Isaiah could 

1 The Russian : A nickname, derived from the fact that the bearer 
(the author's grandfather) had travelled in parts of Russia remote 
from the district to which the Jews of that country are restricted. 
Such nicknames, referring to some peculiarity of person, occupation, 
or history, were more commonly used than surnames. 



IN THE BEGINNING 3 

see everybody's page by just leaning over. And if 
some of our cramped fingers were clumsy, and did not 
form the loops and curves accurately, all he had to 
do was to stretch out his hand and rap with his ruler 
on our respective knuckles. It was all very cosey, 
with the inkwells that could not be upset, and the 
pens that grew in the woods or strutted in the door- 
yard, and the teacher in the closest touch with his 
pupils, as I have just told. And as he labored with 
us, and the hours drew themselves out, he was com- 
forted by the smell of his dinner cooking in some 
little hole adjoining the schoolroom, and by the sound 
of his good Leah or Rachel or Deborah (I don't re- 
member her name) keeping order among his little 
ones. She kept very good order, too, so that most of 
the time you could hear the scratching of the labori- 
ous pens accompanied by the croaking of the frogs in 
the swamp. 

Although my sister and I began our studies at the 
same time, and progressed together, my parents did 
not want me to take up new subjects as fast as 
Fetchke did. They thought my health too delicate for 
much study. So when Fetchke had her Russian les- 
son I was told to go and play. I am sorry to say that 
I was disobedient on these occasions, as on many 
others. I did not go and play ; I looked on, I listened, 
when Fetchke rehearsed her lesson at home. And one 
evening I stole the Russian primer and repaired to a 
secret place I knew of. It was a storeroom for broken 
chairs and rusty utensils and dried apples. Nobody 
would look for me in that dusty hole. Nobody did 
look there, but they looked everywhere else, in the 
house, and in the yard, and in the barn, and down 
the street, and at our neighbors' ; and while every- 
body was searching and calling for me, and telling 
each other when I was last seen, and what I was then 



4 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

doing, I, Maslike, was bending over the stolen book, 
rehearsing A, B, C, by the names my sister had 
given them; and before anybody hit upon my re- 
treat, I could spell B-O-G, Bog (God) and K-A-Z-A, 
Kaza (goat). I did not mind in the least being 
caught, for I had my new accomplishment to show 
off. 

I remember the littered place, and the high chest 
that served as. my table, and the blue glass lamp that 
lighted my secret efforts. I remember being brought 
from there into the firelit room where the family was 
assembled, and confusing them all by my recital of 
the simple words, B-O-G, Bog, and K-A-Z-A, Kaza. 
1 was not reproached for going into hiding at bedtime, 
and the next day I was allowed to take part in the 
Russian lesson. 

Alas ! there were not many lessons more. Long 
before we had exhausted Reb' Isaiah's learning, my 
sister and I had to give up our teacher, because the 
family fortunes began to decline, and luxuries, such 
as schooling, had to be cut off. Isaiah the Scribe 
taught us, in all, perhaps two terms, in which time 
we learned Yiddish and Russian, and a little arith- 
metic. But little good we had from our ability to read, 
for there were no books in our house except prayer- 
books and other religious writings, mostly in Hebrew. 
For our skill in writing we had as little use, since 
letter-writing was not an everyday exercise, and idle 
writing was not thought of. Our good teacher, how- 
ever, who had taken pride in our progress, would not 
let us lose all that we had learned from him. Books 
he could not lend us, because he had none himself ; 
but he could, and he did, write us out a beautiful 
" copy " apiece, which we could repeat over and over, 
from time to time, and so keep our hands in. 

I wonder that I have forgotten the graceful sen- 



IN THE BEGINNING 5 

tences of my " copy " ; for I wrote them out just about 
countless times. It was in the form of a letter, written 
on lovely pink paper (my sister's was blue), the lines 
taking the shape of semicircles across the page ; and 
that without any guide lines showing. The script, of 
course, was perfect — in the best manner of Isaiah 
the Scribe — and the sentiments therein expressed 
were entirely noble. I was supposed to be a high- 
school pupil away on my vacation ; and I was writing 
to my " Respected Parents," to assure them of my wel- 
fare, and to tell them how, in the midst of my pleasures, 
I still longed for my friends, and looked forward 
with eagerness to the renewal of my studies. All this, 
in phrases half Yiddish, half German, and altogether 
foreign to the ears of Polotzk. At least, I never heard 
such talk in the market, when I went to buy a kopeck's 
worth of sunflower seeds. 



CHAPTER II 

THE BOUNDARIES STRETCH 

When I next went to school it was in a new world, 
a world of which even Reb' Isaiah knew very little 
besides its name. For when I was about ten years old, 
my father, failing to reestablish himself in business 
after a series of misfortunes that left him ruined, emi- 
grated to America. 

I was used to his going away from home, and 
"America" did not mean much more to me than 
" Kherson," or " Odessa," or any other names of 
places where fathers went to look for a living. I under- 
stood vaguely, from the gravity with which his plans 
were discussed, and from references to ships, societies, 
and other unfamiliar things, that this enterprise was 
different from previous ones ; but my excitement and 
emotion on the morning of my father's departure were 
mainly vicarious. 

I know the day when "America" as a world en- 
tirely unlike Polotzk lodged in my brain, to become 
the centre of all my dreams and speculations. Well I 
know the day. I was in bed, sharing the measles with 
some of the other children. Mother brought us a thick 
letter from father, written just before boarding the 
ship. The letter was full of excitement. There was 
something in it besides the description of travel, some- 
thing besides the pictures of crowds of people, of for- 
eign cities, of a ship ready to put out to sea. My father 
was travelling at the expense of a charitable organiza- 
tion, without means of his own, without plans, to a 
strange world where he had no friends; and yet he 
wrote with the confidence of a well-equipped soldier 



THE BOUNDARIES STRETCH 7 

going into battle. The rhetoric is mine. Father simply 
wrote that the emigration committee was taking good 
care of everybody, that the weather was fine, and the 
ship comfortable. But I heard something, as we read 
the letter together in the darkened room, that was 
more than the words seemed to say. There was an 
elation, a hint of triumph, such as had never been in 
my father's letters before. I cannot tell how I knew 
it. I felt a stirring, a straining in my father's letter. 
It was there, even though my mother stumbled over 
strange words, even though she cried, as women will 
when somebody is going away. My father was inspired 
by a vision. He saw something — he promised us 
something. It was this " America." And " America " 
became my dream. 

While it was nothing new for my father to go far 
from home in search of his fortune, the circumstances 
in which he left us were unlike anything we had ex- 
perienced before. We who had once had everything 
now had no reliable source of income, no settled home, 
no immediate prospects. We hardly knew where we 
belonged in the simple scheme of our society. My 
mother, who had once been a figure in the business 
world, had nothing like her former success. Her health 
was impaired from a long illness, her place in the 
world of affairs had long been filled by others, and 
there was no capital to start her anew. Her brothers 
did what they could for her. They were well-to-do, but 
they all had large families, with marriageable daugh- 
ters requiring dowries and sons to be bought out of 
military service. The allowance they made her was 
generous compared to their means, — - affection and 
duty could do no more, — but there were four of us 
growing children, and my mother was obliged to 
make every effort within her power to piece out her 
income. 



8 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

How quickly we came down from a large establish- 
ment, with servants and retainers, and a place among 
the best in Polotzk, to a single room hired by the 
week, and the humblest associations, and the averted 
heads of former friends! But oftenest it was my 
mother who turned away her head. She took to using 
the side streets, to avoid the pitiful eyes of the kind, 
and the scornful eyes of the haughty. Both were 
turned on her as she trudged from store to store, and 
from house to house, peddling tea or other ware ; and 
both were hard to bear. Many a winter morning she 
arose in the dark, to tramp three or four miles in the 
gripping cold, through the dragging snow, with a 
pound of tea for a distant customer; and her profit 
was perhaps twenty kopecks. Many a time she fell on 
the ice, as she climbed the steep bank on the far side 
of the Dvina, a heavy basket on each arm. More than 
once she fainted at the doors of her customers, ashamed 
to knock as suppliant where she had used to be re- 
ceived as an honored guest. I hope the angels did not 
have to count the tears that fell on her frost-bitten, 
aching hands as she counted her bitter earnings at 
night. 

And who took care of us children while my mother 
tramped the streets with her basket? Why, who but 
Fetchke? Who but the little housewife of twelve? 
Sure of our safety was my mother with Fetchke to 
watch ; sure of our comfort with Fetchke to cook the 
soup and divide the scrap of meat and remember the 
next meal. Joseph was in heder all day ; the baby was 
a quiet little thing ; Mashke was no worse than usual. 
But still there was plenty to do, with order to keep 
in a crowded room, and the washing, and the mend- 
ing. And Fetchke did it all. She went to the river 
with the women to wash the clothes, and tucked up 
her dress and stood bare-legged in the water, like the 



THE BOUNDARIES STRETCH 9 

rest of them, and beat and rubbed with all her might, 
till our miserable rags gleamed white again. 

And I? I usually had a cold, or a cough, or some- 
thing to disable me ; and I never had any talent for 
housework. If I swept and sanded the floor, polished 
the samovar, and ran errands, I was doing much. I 
minded the baby, who did not need much minding. I 
was willing enough, I suppose, but the hard things 
were done without my help. 

• Not that I mean to belittle the part that I played 
in our reduced domestic economy. Indeed, I am very 
particular to get all the credit due me. I always re- 
mind my sister Deborah, who was the baby of those 
humble days, that it was I who pierced her ears. Ear- 
rings were a requisite part of a girl's toilet. Even a 
beggar girl must have earrings, were they only loops 
of thread with glass beads. I heard my mother be- 
moan the baby because she had not time to pierce her 
ears. Promptly I armed myself with a coarse needle 
and a spool of thread, and towed Deborah out into 
the woodshed. The operation was entirely successful, 
though the baby was entirely ungrateful. And I am 
proud to this day of the unflinching manner in which 
I did what I conceived to be my duty. If Deborah 
chooses to go with ungarnished ears, it is her affair ; 
my conscience is free of all reproach. 

I had a direct way in everything. I rushed right in 
— I spoke right out. My mother sent me sometimes 
to deliver a package of tea, and I was proud to help 
in business. One day I went across the Dvina and far 
up the other side. It was a good-sized expedition for 
me to make alone, and I was not a little pleased with 
myself when I delivered my package, safe and intact, 
into the hands of my customer. But the storekeeper 
was not pleased at all. She sniffed and sniffed, she 
pinched the tea, she shook it all out on the counter. 



10 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

"iVa, take it back," she said in disgust; "this is 
not the tea I always buy. It 's a poorer quality." 

I knew the woman was mistaken. I was acquainted 
with my mother's several grades of tea. So I spoke 
up manfully. 

"Oh, no," I said; "this is the tea my mother al- 
ways sends you. There is no worse tea." 

Nothing in my life ever hurt me more than that 
woman's answer to my argument. She laughed — she 
simply laughed. But I understood, even before she con- 
trolled herself sufficiently to make verbal remarks, that 
I had spoken like a fool, had lost my mother a customer. 
I had only spoken the truth, but I had not expressed 
it diplomatically. That was no way to make business. 

I felt very sore to be returning home with the tea 
still in my hand, but I forgot my trouble in watching 
a summer storm gather up the river. The few passen- 
gers who took the boat with me looked scared as the 
sky darkened, and the boatman grasped his oars very 
soberly. It took my breath away to see the signs, but 
I liked it ; and I was much disappointed to get home 
dry. 

When my mother heard of my misadventure she 
laughed, too ; but that was different, and I was able 
to laugh with her. 

This is the way I helped in the housekeeping and 
in business. I hope it does not appear as if I did not 
take our situation to heart, for I did — in my own 
fashion. It was plain, even to an idle dreamer like 
me, that we were living on the charity of our friends, 
and barely living at that. It was plain, from my fa- 
ther's letters, that he was scarcely able to support him- 
self in America, and that there was no immediate 
prospect of our joining him. I realized it all, but I 
considered it temporary, and I found plenty of com- 
fort in writing long letters to my father — real, origi- 



THE BOUNDARIES STRETCH 11 

nal letters this time, not copies of Reb' Isaiah's model 
— letters which my father treasured for years. 

I am sure I made as serious efforts as anybody to 
prepare myself for life in America on the lines indi- 
cated in my father's letters. In America, he wrote, it 
was no disgrace to work at a trade. Workmen and 
capitalists were equal. The employer addressed the 
employee as you, not, familiarly, as thou. The cobbler 
and the teacher had the same title, " Mister." And all 
the children, boys and girls, Jews and Gentiles, went 
to school ! Education would be ours for the asking, 
and economic independence also, as soon as we were 
prepared. He wanted Fetchke and me to be taught 
some trade ; so my sister was apprenticed to a dress- 
maker and I to a milliner. 

Fetchke, of course, was successful, and I, of course, 
was not. My sister managed to learn her trade, al- 
though most of the time at the dressmaker's she had 
to spend in sweeping, running errands, and minding 
the babies ; the usual occupations of the apprentice in 
any trade. 

Bat I — I had to be taken away from the milliner's 
after a couple of months. I did try, honestly. With 
all my eyes I watched my mistress build up a chimney 
pot of straw and things. I ripped up old bonnets with 
enthusiasm. I picked up everybody's spools and thim- 
bles, and other far-rolling objects. I did just as I was 
told, for I was determined to become a famous milli- 
ner, since America honored the workman so. But most 
of the time I was sent away on errands — to the mar- 
ket to buy soup greens, to the corner store to get 
change, and all over town with bandboxes half as 
round again as I. It was winter, and I was not very 
well dressed. I froze ; I coughed ; my mistress said I 
was not of much use to her. So my mother kept me 
at home, and my career as a milliner was blighted. 



12 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

This was during our last year in Russia, when I was 
between twelve and thirteen years of age. I was old 
enough to be ashamed of my failures, but I did not 
have much time to think about them, because my 
Uncle Solomon took me with him to Vitebsk. 

My visit was prolonged for six months, an interval 
crowded with experiences that enlarged my idea of the 
world I lived in. For the first time in my life I found 
books at my elbow — volumes of romance and poetry 
about people who were not mentioned in the Bible, 
which had been practically my only reading before. 
Through my cousin Hirshel, who was a student, 1 
learned of fascinating subjects that were taught in the 
secular schools, and my vague longing for education 
turned into an eager desire to know what was in the 
geography book, in the grammar, in the histories. 

There were other things besides books, at my un- 
cle's, to push back the limits of my world. There was 
Uncle himself, who travelled much in connection with 
his business, and brought back stories of places, people, 
and enterprises that filled me with wonder. Then there 
were visits to the homes of my uncle's acquaintances, 
where I saw life ordered in gracious ways unknown to 
Polotzk. Altogether, my adventures in Vitebsk were 
so many doors opening on a wider world ; so many 
horizons, one beyond the other. The boundaries of life 
had stretched, and I had filled my lungs with the 
thrilling air from a great Beyond. Child though 1 
was, Polotzk, when I came back, was too small for me. 

And even Vitebsk, for all its peepholes into a Be- 
yond, presently began to shrink in my imagination, as 
America loomed near. My father's letters warned us 
to prepare for the summons, and we lived in a quiver 
of expectation. 

Not that my father had grown suddenly rich. He 
was so far from rich that he was going to borrow every 



THE BOUNDARIES STRETCH 13 

cent of the money for our third-class passage ; but he 
had a business in view which he could carry on all the 
better for having the family with him ; and, besides, 
we were borrowing right and left anyway, and to no 
definite purpose. With the children, he argued, every 
year in Russia was a year lost. They should be spend- 
ing the precious years in school, in learning English, 
in becoming Americans. United in America, there 
were ten chances of our getting to our feet again to 
one chance in our scattered, aimless state. 

So at last I was going to America ! Really, really 
going, at last ! The boundaries burst. The arch of 
heaven soared. A million suns shone out for every star. 
The winds rushed in from outer space, roaring in my 
ears, " America ! America ! " 



CHAPTER III 

A GREAT ADVENTURE 

On the day when our steamer ticket arrived, my 
mother did not go out with her basket, my brother 
stayed out of heder, and my sister salted the soup 
three times. I do not know what I did to celebrate the 
occasion. Very likely I played tricks on Deborah, and 
wrote a long letter to my father. 

Before sunset the news was all over Polotzk that 
Hannah Hayye had received a steamer ticket for 
America. Then they began to come. Friends and foes, 
distant relatives and new acquaintances, young and 
old, wise and foolish, debtors and creditors, and mere 
neighbors, — from every quarter of the city, from both 
sides of the Dvina, from over the Polota, from no- 
where, — a steady stream of them poured into our 
street, both day and night, till the hour of our depar- 
ture. And my mother gave audience. Her faded ker- 
chief halfway off her head, her black ringlets straying, 
her apron often at her eyes, she received her guests in 
a rainbow of smiles and tears. She was the heroine of 
Polotzk, and she conducted herself appropriately. She 
gave her heart's thanks for the congratulations and 
blessings that poured in on her ; ready tears for con- 
dolences ; patient answers to monotonous questions ; 
and handshakes and kisses and hugs she gave gratis. 

What did they not ask, the eager, foolish, friendly 
people? They wanted to handle the ticket, and mother 
must read them what is written on it. How much did 
it cost ? Was it all paid for ? Were we going to have 
a foreign passport or did we intend to steal across the 



A GREAT ADVENTURE 15 

border ? Were we not all going to have new dresses 
to travel in ? Was it sure that we could get koscher 
food on the ship? And with the questions poured in 
suggestions, and solid chunks of advice were rammed 
in by nimble prophecies. Mother must be sure and 
pack her prayer books and Bible, and twenty pounds 
of zwieback at the least. If they did serve trefah on 
the ship, she and the four children would have to 
starve, unless she carried provisions from home. — Oh, 
she must take all the featherbeds ! Featherbeds are 
scarce in America. In America they sleep on hard 
mattresses, even in winter. Haveh Mirel, Yachne the 
dressmaker's daughter, who emigrated to New York 
two years ago, wrote her mother that she got up from 
childbed with sore sides, because she had no feather- 
bed. — Mother must n't carry her money in a pocket- 
book. She must sew it into the lining of her jacket. 
The policemen in Castle Garden take all their money 
from the passengers as they land, unless the travellers 
deny having any. 

And so on, and so on, till my poor mother was com- 
pletely bewildered. And as the day set for our depar- 
ture approached, the people came oftener and stayed 
longer, and rehearsed my mother in long messages for 
their friends in America, praying that she deliver 
them promptly on her arrival, and without fail, and 
might God bless her for her kindness, and she must 
be sure and write them how she found their friends. 

The last night in Polotzk we slept at my uncle's 
house, having disposed of all our belongings, to the last 
three-legged stool, except such as we were taking with 
us. I could go straight to the room where I slept with 
my aunt that night, if I were suddenly set down in 
Polotzk. But I did not really sleep. Excitement kept 
me awake, and my aunt snored hideously. In the morn- 
ing I was going away from Polotzk, forever and ever. 



16 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

I was going on a wonderful journey. I was going to 
America. How could I sleep ? 

My uncle gave out a false bulletin, with the last 
batch that the gossips carried away in the evening. 
He told them that we were not going to start till the 
second day. This he did in the hope of smuggling us 
quietly out, and so saving us the wear and tear of a 
public farewell. But his ruse failed of success. Half 
of Polotzk was at my uncle's gate in the morning, to 
conduct us to the railway station, and the other half 
was already there before we arrived. 

The procession resembled both a funeral and a 
triumph. The women wept over us, reminding us elo- 
quently of the perils of the sea, of the bewilderment 
of a foreign land, of the torments of homesickness that 
awaited us. They bewailed my mother's lot, who had 
to tear herself away from blood relations to go among 
strangers ; who had to face gendarmes, ticket agents, 
and sailors, unprotected by a masculine escort; who 
had to care for four young children in the confusion 
of travel, and very likely feed them trefah or see 
them starve on the way. Or they praised her for a 
brave pilgrim, and expressed confidence in her ability 
to cope with gendarmes and ticket agents, and blessed 
her with every other word, and all but carried her in 
their arms. 

At the station the procession disbanded and became 
a mob. My uncle and my tall cousins did their best 
to protect us, but we wanderers were almost torn to 
pieces. They did get us into a car at last, but the riot 
on the station platform continued unquelled. When 
the warning bell rang out, it was drowned in a con- 
founding babel of voices, — fragments of the oft-re- 
peated messages, admonitions, lamentations, blessings, 
farewells. " Don't forget !" — " Take care of — " 
" Keep your tickets — " " Garlick is best!" "Happy 



A GREAT ADVENTURE 17 

journey!" " God help you!" "Good-bye! Good- 
bye!" "Remember — " 

The last I saw of Polotzk was an agitated mass of 
people, waving colored handkerchiefs and other fran- 
tic bits of calico, madly gesticulating, falling on each 
other's necks, gone wild altogether. Then the station 
became invisible, and the shining tracks spun out 
from sky to sky. I was in the middle of the great, 
great world, and the longest road was mine. 

Memory may take a rest while I copy from a con- 
temporaneous document the story of the great voyage. 
In accordance with a promise to my uncle, I wrote, 
during my first months in America, a detailed account 
of our adventures between Polotzk and Boston. Ink 
was cheap, and the epistle, in Yiddish, occupied me for 
many hot summer hours. It was a great disaster, there- 
fore, to have a lamp upset on my writing-table, when 
I was near the end, soaking the thick pile of letter 
sheets in kerosene. I was obliged to make a fair copy 
for my uncle, and my father kept the oily, smelly orig- 
inal. After a couple of years' teasing, he induced me 
to translate the letter into English, for the benefit of 
a friend who did not know Yiddish ; for the benefit 
of the present narrative, which was not thought of 
thirteen years ago. I can hardly refrain from moral- 
izing as I turn to the leaves of my childish manu- 
script, grateful at last for the calamity of the over- 
turned lamp. 

Our route lay over the German border, with Ham- 
burg for our port. On the way to the frontier we 
stopped for a farewell visit in Vilna, where my mother 
had a brother. Vilna is slighted in my description. I 
find special mention of only two things, the horse-cars 
and the book-stores. 

On a gray wet morning in early April we set out 



18 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

for the frontier. This was the real beginning of our 
journey, and all my faculties of observation were alert. 
I took note of everything, — the weather, the trains, 
the bustle of railroad stations, our fellow passengers, 
and the family mood at every stage of our progress. 

The bags and bundles which composed our travel- 
ling outfit were much more bulky than valuable. A 
trifling sum of money, the steamer ticket, and the for- 
eign passport were the magic agents by means of 
which we hoped to span the five thousand miles of 
earth and water between us and my father. The pass- 
port was supposed to pass us over the frontier with- 
out any trouble, but on account of the prevalence of 
cholera in some parts of the country, the poorer sort 
of travellers, such as emigrants, were subjected, at 
this time, to more than ordinary supervision and regu- 
lation. 

At Versbolovo, the last station on the Russian side, 
we met the first of our troubles. A German physician 
and several gendarmes boarded the train and put us 
through a searching examination as to our health, 
destination, and financial resources. As a result of 
the inquisition we were informed that we would not 
be allowed to cross the frontier unless we exchanged 
our third-class steamer ticket for second-class, which 
would require two hundred rubles more than we pos- 
sessed. Our passport was taken from us, and we were 
to be turned back on our journey. 

My letter describes the situation : — 

"We were homeless, houseless, and friendless in a strange 
place. We had hardly money enough to last us through the 
voyage for which we had hoped and waited for three long 
years. We had suffered much that the reunion we longed 
for might come about ; we had prepared ourselves to suffer 
more in order to bring it about, and had parted with 
those we loved, with places that were dear to us in spite 



A GREAT ADVENTURE 19 

of what we passed through in them, never again to see 
them, as we were convinced — all for the same dear end. 
With strong hopes and high spirits that hid the sad part- 
ing, we had started on our long journey. And now we 
were checked so unexpectedly but surely, the blow coming 
from where we little expected it, being, as we believed, 
safe in that quarter. When my mother had recovered 
enough to speak, she began to argue with the gendarme, 
telling him our story and begging him to be kind. The 
children were frightened and all but I cried. I was only 
wondering what would happen. 

Moved by our distress, the German officers gave us 
the best advice they could. We were to get out at the 
station of Kibart, on the Russian side, and apply to 
one Herr Schidorsky, who might help us on our 
way. 

The letter dwells gratefully on the kindness of Herr 
Schidorsky, who became the agent of our salvation. 
He procured my mother a pass to Eidtkuhnen, the 
German frontier station, where his older brother, as 
chairman of a well-known emigrant aid association, 
arranged for our admission into Germany. During the 
negotiations, which took several days, the good man 
of Kibart entertained us in his own house, shabby 
emigrants though we were. The Schidorsky brothers 
were Jews, but it is not on that account that their 
name has been lovingly remembered for fifteen years 
in my family. 

On the German side our course joined that of many 
other emigrant groups, on their way to Hamburg and 
other ports. We were a clumsy enough crowd, with 
wide, unsophisticated eyes, with awkward bundles 
hugged in our arms, and our hearts set on America. 

The letter to my uncle faithfully describes every 
stage of our bustling progress. Here is a sample scene 
of many that I recorded : — 



20 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

There was a terrible confusion in the baggage-room 
where we were directed to go. Boxes, baskets, bags, va- 
lises, and great, shapeless things belonging to no particular 
class, were thrown about by porters and other men, who 
sorted them and put tickets on all but those containing 
provisions, while others were opened and examined in haste. 
At last our turn came, and our things, along with those of 
all other American-bound travellers, were taken away to be 
steamed and smoked and other such processes gone through. 
We were told to wait till notice should be given us of some- 
thing else to be done. 

The phrases " we were told to do this " and " told to 
do that " occur again and again in my narrative, and 
the most effective handling of the facts could give no 
more vivid picture of the proceedings. We emigrants 
were herded at the stations, packed in the cars, and 
driven from place to place like cattle. 

At the expected hour we all tried to find room in a car 
indicated by the conductor. We tried, but could only find 
enough space on the floor for our baggage, on which we 
made-believe sitting comfortably. For now we were obliged 
to exchange the comparative comforts of a third-class pas- 
senger train for the certain discomforts of a fourth-class 
one. There were only four narrow benches in the whole 
car, and about twice as many people were already seated 
on these as they were probably supposed to accommodate. 
All other space, to the last inch, was crowded by passen- 
gers or their luggage. It was very hot and close and alto- 
gether uncomfortable, and still at every new station fresh 
passengers came crowding in, and actually made room, 
spare as it was, for themselves. It became so terrible that 
all glared madly at the conductor as he allowed more peo- 
ple to come into that prison, and trembled at the announce- 
ment of every station. I cannot see even now how the offi- 
cers could allow such a thing ; it was really dangerous. 

The plight of the bewildered emigrant on the way 
to foreign parts is always pitiful enough, but for us 



A GREAT ADVENTURE 21 

who came from plague-ridden Russia the terrors of 
the way were doubled. 

In a great lonely field, opposite a solitary house within 
a large yard, our train pulled up at last, and a conductor 
commanded the passengers to make haste and get out. He 
need not have told us to hurry ; we were glad enough to be 
free again after such a long imprisonment in the uncom- 
fortable car. All rushed to the door. We breathed more 
freely in the open field, but the conductor did not wait for 
us to enjoy our freedom. He hurried us into the one large 
room which made up the house, and then into the yard. 
Here a great many men and women, dressed in white, re- 
ceived us, the women attending to the women and girls of 
the passengers, and the men to the others. 

This was another scene of bewildering confusion, parents 
losing their children, and little ones crying ; baggage be- 
ing thrown together in one corner of the yard, heedless of 
contents, which suffered in consequence ; those white-clad 
Germans shouting commands, always accompanied with 
" Quick ! Quick ! " — the confused passengers obeying all 
orders like meek children, only questioning now and then 
what was going to be done with them. 

And no wonder if in some minds stories arose of people 
being captured by robbers, murderers, and the like. Here 
we had been taken to a lonely place where only that house 
was to be seen ; our things were taken away, our friends 
separated from us ; a man came to inspect us, as if to ascer- 
tain our full value ; strange-looking people driving us about 
like dumb animals, helpless and unresisting ; children we 
could not see crying in a way that suggested terrible things ; 
ourselves driven into a little room where a great kettle was 
boiling on a little stove ; our clothes taken off, our bodies 
rubbed with a slippery substance that might be any bad 
thing; a shower of warm water let down on us without 
warning ; again driven to another little room where we sit, 
wrapped in woollen blankets till large, coarse bags are 
brought in, their contents turned out, and we see only a 
cloud of steam, and hear the women's orders to dress our- 



22 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

selves, — " Quick ! Quick ! " — or else we '11 miss — some- 
thing we cannot hear. We are forced to pick out our clothes 
from among all the others, with the steam blinding us ; we 
choke, cough, entreat the women to give us time ; they per- 
sist, " Quick ! Quick ! — or you 11 miss the train ! " — Oh, 
so we really won't be murdered ! They are only making us 
ready for the continuing of our journey, cleaning us of all 
suspicions of dangerous sickness. Thank God ! 

We arrived in Hamburg early one morning, after a 
long night in the crowded cars. We were marched up 
to a strange vehicle, long and narrow and high, drawn 
by two horses and commanded by a mute driver. We 
were piled up on this wagon, our baggage was thrown 
after us, and we started on a sight-seeing tour across 
the city of Hamburg. The sights I faithfully enumer- 
ate for the benefit of my uncle include little carts 
drawn by dogs, and big cars that run of themselves, 
later identified as electric cars. 

Suddenly, when everything interesting seemed at an 
end, we all recollected how long it was since we had 
started on our funny ride. Hours, we thought, and still the 
horses ran. Now we rode through quieter streets where 
there were fewer shops and more wooden houses. Still the 
horses seemed to have but just started. I looked over our 
perch again. Something made me think of a description I 
had read of criminals being carried on long journeys in un- 
comfortable things — like this ? Well, it was strange — ■ 
this long, long drive, the conveyance, no word of explana- 
tion ; and all, though going different ways, being packed 
off together. We were strangers ; the driver knew it. He 
might take us anywhere — how could we tell ? I was 
frightened again as in Berlin. The faces around me con- 
fessed the same. 

Our mysterious ride came to an end on the out- 
skirts of the city, where we were once more lined 
up, cross-questioned, disinfected, labelled, and pigeon- 



A GREAT ADVENTURE 23 

holed. This was one of the occasions when we sus- 
pected that we were the victims of a conspiracy to 
extort money from us ; for here, as at every repe- 
tition of the purifying operations we had undergone, 
a fee was levied on us, so much per head. My mother, 
indeed, seeing her tiny hoard melting away, had long 
since sold some articles from our baggage to a fellow 
passenger richer than she, but even so she did not 
have enough money to pay the fee demanded of her 
in Hamburg. Her statement was not accepted, and 
we all suffered the last indignity of having our per- 
sons searched. 

This last place of detention turned out to be a 
prison. " Quarantine " they called it, and there was a 
great deal of it — two weeks of it. Two weeks within 
high brick walls, several hundred of us herded in half 
a dozen compartments, — numbered compartments ; 
sleeping in rows, like sick people in a hospital; 
with roll-call morning and night, and short rations 
three times a day ; with never a sign of the free 
world beyond our barred windows ; with anxiety and 
longing and homesickness in our hearts, and in our 
ears the unfamiliar voice of the invisible ocean, 
which drew and repelled us at the same time. The 
fortnight in quarantine was not an episode ; it was an 
epoch, divisible into eras, periods, events. 

The greatest event was the arrival of some ship to take 
some of the waiting passengers. When the gates were 
opened and the lucky ones said good-bye, those left behind 
felt hopeless of ever seeing the gates open for them. It 
was both pleasant and painful, for the strangers grew to 
be fast friends in a day, and really rejoiced in each other's 
fortune; but the regretful envy could not be helped either. 

Our turn came at last. We were conducted through 
the gate of departure, and after some hours of be- 



24 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

wildering manoeuvres, described in great detail in the 
report to my uncle, we found ourselves — we five 
frightened pilgrims from Polotzk — on the deck of a 
great big steamship afloat on the strange big waters 
of the ocean. 

For sixteen days the ship was our world. My letter 
dwells solemnly on the details of the life at sea, as if 
afraid to cheat my uncle of the smallest circumstance. 
It does not shrink from describing the torments of 
seasickness ; it notes every change in the weather. A 
rough night is described, when the ship pitched and 
rolled so that people were thrown from their berths ; 
days and nights when we crawled through dense 
fogs, our foghorn drawing answering warnings from 
invisible ships. The perils of the sea were not mini- 
mized in the imaginations of us inexperienced voyagers. 
The captain and his officers ate their dinners, smoked 
their pipes and slept soundly in their turns, while we 
frightened emigrants turned our faces to the wall 
and awaited our watery graves. 

All this while the seasickness lasted. Then came 
happy hours on deck, with fugitive sunshine, birds 
atop the crested waves, band music and dancing and 
fun. I explored the ship, made friends with officers 
and crew, or pursued my thoughts in quiet nooks. It 
was my first experience of the ocean, and I was pro- 
foundly moved. 

I would imagine myself all alone on the ocean, and Rob- 
inson Crusoe was very real to me. I was alone sometimes. 
I was aware of no human presence ; I was conscious only 
of sea and sky and something I did not understand. And 
as I listened to its solemn voice, I felt as if I had found a 
friend, and knew that I loved the ocean. It seemed as if it 
were within as well as without, part of myself ; and I won- 
dered how I had lived without it, and if I could ever part 
with it. 



A GREAT ADVENTURE 25 

And so suffering, fearing, brooding, rejoicing, we 
crept nearer and nearer to the coveted shore, until, 
on a glorious May morning, six weeks after our de- 
parture from Polotzk, our eyes beheld the Promised 
Land, and my father received us in his arms. 



CHAPTER IV 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS 

By the time we joined my father, he had surveyed 
many avenues of approach toward the coveted citadel 
of fortune. One of these, heretofore untried, he now 
proposed to essay, armed with new courage, and 
cheered on by the presence of his family. In partner- 
ship with an energetic little man who had an English 
chapter in his history, he prepared to set up a re- 
freshment booth on Crescent Beach. But while he was 
completing arrangements at the beach we remained 
in town, where we enjoyed the educational advantages 
of a thickly populated neighborhood ; namely, Wall 
Street, in the West End of Boston. 

Anybody who knows Boston knows that the West 
and North Ends comprise the chief tenement districts 
of Boston, where people who have never lived in the 
tenements are fond of going sight-seeing. He may 
know all this and yet not guess how Wall Street, in 
the West End, appears in the eyes of a little immi- 
grant from Polotzk. What would the sophisticated 
sight-seer say about Union Place, off Wall Street, 
where my new home waited for me ? He would say 
that it is no place at all, but a short box of an alley. 
Two rows of three-story tenements are its sides, a 
stingy strip of sky is its lid, a littered pavement is 
the floor, and a narrow mouth its exit. 

But I saw a very different picture on my introduc- 
tion to Union Place. I saw two imposing rows of 
brick buildings, loftier than any dwelling I had ever 
lived in. Brick was even on the ground for me to 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 27 

tread on, instead of common earth or boards. Many 
friendly windows stood open, filled with uncovered 
heads of women and children. I thought the people 
were interested in us, which was very neighborly. I 
looked up to the topmost row of windows, and my eyes 
were filled with the May blue of an American sky ! 

In our days of affluence in Russia we had been ac- 
customed to upholstered parlors, embroidered linen, 
silver spoons and candlesticks, goblets of gold, kitchen 
shelves shining with copper and brass. We had feather- 
beds heaped halfway to the ceiling; we had clothes 
presses dusky with velvet and silk and fine woollen. 
The three small rooms into which my father now 
ushered us, up one flight of stairs, contained only the 
necessary beds, with lean mattresses ; a few wooden 
chairs ; a table or two ; a mysterious iron structure, 
which later turned out to be a stove ; a couple of un- 
ornamental kerosene lamps ; and a scanty array of 
cooking-utensils and crockery. And yet we were all 
impressed with our new home and its furniture. It 
was not only because we had just passed through our 
seven lean years, cooking in earthen vessels, eating 
black bread on holidays and wearing cotton ; it was 
chiefly because these wooden chairs and tin pans were 
American chairs and pans that they shone glorious in 
our eyes. And if there was anything lacking for com- 
fort or decoration we expected it to be presently sup- 
plied — at least, we children did. Perhaps my mother 
alone, of us newcomers, appreciated the shabbiness of 
the little apartment, and realized that for her there 
was as yet no laying down of the burden of poverty. 

Our initiation into American ways began with the 
first step on the new soil. My father found occasion 
to instruct or correct us even on the way from the 
pier to Wall Street, which journey we made crowded 
together in a rickety cab. He told us not to lean out 



28 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

of the windows, not to point, and explained the word 
" greenhorn;" We did not want to be " greenhorns," 
and gave the strictest attention to my father's instruc- 
tions. I do not know when my parents found oppor- 
tunity to review together the history of Polotzk in the 
three years past, for we children had no patience with 
the subject ; my mother's narrative was constantly in- 
terrupted by irrelevant questions, interjections, and 
explanations. 

The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. 
My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, 
without any cooking, from little tin cans that had print- 
ing all over them. He attempted to introduce us to a 
queer, slippery kind of fruit, which he called "banana," 
but had to give it up for the time being. After the meal, 
he had better luck with a curious piece of furniture on 
runners, which he called " rocking-chair." There were 
five of us newcomers, and we found five different ways of 
getting into the American machine of perpetual motion, 
and as many ways of getting out of it. One born and 
bred to the use of a rocking-chair cannot imagine how 
ludicrous people can make themselves when attempting 
to use it for the first time. We laughed immoderately 
over our various experiments with the novelty, which 
was a wholesome way of letting off steam after the 
unusual excitement of the day. 

In our flat we did not think of such a thing as storing 
the coal in the bathtub. There was no bathtub. So in the 
evening of the first day my father conducted us to the 
public baths. As we moved along in a little procession, I 
was delighted with the illumination of the streets. So 
many lamps, and they burned until morning, my father 
said, and so people did not need to carry lanterns. In 
America, then, everything was free, as we had heard in 
Russia. Light was free ; the streets were as bright as 
a synagogue on a holy day. Music was free ; we had 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 29 

been serenaded, to our gaping delight, by a brass 
band of many pieces, soon after our installation on 
Union Place. 

Education was free. That subject my father had 
written about repeatedly, as comprising his chief hope 
for us children, the essence of American opportunity, 
the treasure that no thief could touch, not even mis- 
fortune or poverty. It was the one thing that he was 
able to promise us when he sent for us ; surer, safer 
than bread or shelter. On our second day I was 
thrilled with the realization of what this freedom of 
education meant. A little girl from across the alley 
came and offered to conduct us to school. My father 
was out, but we five between us had a few words of 
English by this time. We knew the word school. We 
understood. This child, who had never seen us till 
yesterday, who could not pronounce our names, who was 
not much better dressed than we, was able to offer us 
the freedom of the schools of Boston ! No application 
made, no questions asked, no examinations, rulings, 
exclusions ; no machinations, no fees. The doors stood 
open for every one of us. The smallest child could 
show us the way. 

This incident impressed me more than anything I 
had heard in advance of the freedom of education in 
America. It was a concrete proof — almost the thing 
itself. One had to experience it to understand it. 

It was a great disappointment to be told by my father 
that we were not to enter upon our school career at 
once. It was too near the end of the term, he said, and 
we were going to move to Crescent Beach in a week or 
so. We had to wait until the opening of the schools in 
September. What a loss of precious time — from May 
till September! 

Not that the time was really lost. Even the interval 
on Union Place was crowded with lessons and experi- 



30 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

ences. We had to visit the stores and be dressed from 
head to foot in American clothing; we had to learn 
the mysteries of the iron stove, the washboard, and 
the speaking-tube; we had to learn to trade with the 
fruit peddler through the window, and not to be afraid 
of the policeman; and, above all, we had to learn 
English. 

The kind people who assisted us in these important 
matters form a group by themselves in the gallery of 
my friends. If I had never seen them from those early 
days till now, I should still have remembered them 
with gratitude. When I enumerate the long list of my 
American teachers, I must begin with those who came 
to us on Wall Street and taught us our first steps. To 
my mother, in her perplexity over the cookstove, the 
woman who showed her how to make the fire was an 
angel of deliverance. A fairy godmother to us children 
was she who led us to a wonderful country called 
" uptown," where, in a dazzlingly beautiful palace 
called a "department store," we exchanged our hate- 
ful homemade European costumes, which pointed us 
out as " greenhorns " to the children on the street, for 
real American machine-made garments, and issued 
forth glorified in each other's eyes. 

With our despised immigrant clothing we shed also 
our impossible Hebrew names. A committee of our 
friends, several years ahead of us in American experi- 
ence, put their heads together and concocted American 
names for us all. Those of our real names that had 
no pleasing American equivalents they ruthlessly 
discarded, content if they retained the initials. My 
mother, possessing a name that was not easily trans- 
latable, was punished with the undignified nickname 
of Annie. Fetchke, Joseph, and Deborah issued as 
Frieda, Joseph, and Dora, respectively. As for poor 
me, I was simply cheated. The name they gave me 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 31 

was hardly new. My Hebrew name being Maryashe 
in full, Mashke for short, Russianized into Marya 
(Mar-ya), my friends said that it would hold good in 
English as Mary ; which was very disappointing, as I 
longed to possess a strange-sounding American name 
like the others. 

I am forgetting the consolation I had, in this mat- 
ter of names, from the use of my surname, which I 
have had no occasion to mention until now. I found 
on my arrival that my father was " Mr. Antin " on 
the slightest provocation, and not, as in Polotzk, on 
state occasions alone. And so I was " Mary Antin," 
and I felt very important to answer to such a digni- 
fied title. It was just like America that even plain 
people should wear their surnames on week days. 



CHAPTER V 

A SEASIDE EPISODE 

As a family we were so diligent under instruction, 
so adaptable, and so clever in hiding our deficiencies, 
that when we made the journey to Crescent Beach, in 
the wake of our small wagon-load of household goods, 
my father had very little occasion to admonish us on 
the way, and I am sure he was not ashamed of us. So 
much we had achieved toward our Americanization 
during the two weeks since our landing. 

Crescent Beach is a name that is printed in very 
small type on the maps of the environs of Boston, but 
a life-size strip of sand curves from Winthrop to Lynn ; 
and that is historic ground in the annals of my family. 
The place is now a popular resort for holiday crowds, 
and is famous under the name of Revere Beach. When 
the reunited Antins made their stand there, however, 
there were no boulevards, no stately bath-houses, no 
hotels, no gaudy amusement places, no illuminations, 
no showmen, no tawdry rabble. There was only the 
bright clean sweep of sand, the summer sea, and the 
summer sky. At high tide the whole Atlantic rushed 
in, tossing the seaweeds in his mane ; at low tide he 
rushed out, growling and gnashing his granite teeth. 
Between tides a baby might play on the beach, dig- 
ging with pebbles and shells, till it lay asleep on the 
sand. The whole sun shone by day, troops of stars by 
night, and the great moon in its season. 

Once we were established in our little cottage, the 
best part of my day was spent in play — frank, hearty, 
boisterous play, such as comes natural to American 
children. In Polotzk I had already begun to be con- 



A SEASIDE EPISODE T S3 

sidered too old for play, excepting set games or or- 
ganized frolics. Here I found myself included with 
children who still played, and I willingly returned to 
childhood. There were plenty of playfellows. My 
father's energetic little partner had a little wife and 
a large family. He kept them in the little cottage 
next to ours ; and that the shanty survived the tumul- 
tuous presence of that brood is a wonder to me to-day. 
The young Wilners included an assortment of boys, 
girls, and twins, of every possible variety of age, size, 
disposition, and sex. They swarmed in and out of the 
cottage all day long, wearing the door-sill hollow, and 
trampling the ground to powder. They swung out of 
windows like monkeys, slid up the roof like flies, and 
shot out of trees like fowl. Even a small person like 
me could n't go anywhere without being run over by a 
Wilner ; and I could never tell which Wilner it was 
because none of them ever stood still long enough to 
be identified ; and also because I suspected that they 
were in the habit of interchanging conspicuous articles 
of clothing, which was very confusing. 

You would suppose that the little mother must 
have been utterly lost, bewildered, trodden down in 
this horde of urchins ; but you are mistaken. Mrs. 
Wilner was a positively majestic little person. She 
ruled her brood with the utmost coolness and strict- 
ness. She had even the biggest boy under her thumb, 
frequently under her palm. If they enjoyed the wild- 
est freedom outdoors, indoors the young Wilners 
lived by the clock. And so at five o'clock in the 
evening, on seven days in the week, my father's part- 
ner's children could be seen in two long rows around 
the supper table. You could tell them apart on this 
occasion, because they all had their faces washed. 
And this is the time to count them: there are twelve 
little Wilners at tabic. 



34 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

I managed to retain my identity in this multitude 
somehow, and while I was very much impressed with 
their numbers, I even dared to pick and choose my 
friends among the Wilners. One or two of the smaller 
boys I liked best of all, for a game of hide-and-seek 
or a frolic on the beach. We played in the water like 
ducks, never taking the trouble to get dry. One day 
I waded out with one of the boys, to see which of us 
dared go farthest. The tide was extremely low, and 
we had not wet our knees when we began to look back 
to see if familiar objects were still in sight, I thought 
we had been wading for hours, and still the water 
was so shallow and quiet. My companion was march- 
ing straight ahead, so I did the same. Suddenly a 
swell lifted us almost off our feet, and we clutched at 
each other simultaneously. There was a lesser swell, 
and little waves began to run, and a sigh went up 
from the sea. The tide was turning — perhaps a 
storm was on the way — and we were miles, dreadful 
miles from dry land. 

Boy and girl turned without a word, four deter- 
mined bare legs ploughing through the water, four 
scared eyes straining toward the land. Through an 
eternity of toil and fear they kept dumbly on, death 
at their heels, pride still in their hearts. At last they 
reach high- water mark — six hours before full tide. 

Each has seen the other afraid, and each rejoices 
in the knowledge. But only the boy is sure of his 
tongue. 

44 You was scared, war n't you ? " he taunts. 

The girl understands so much, and is able to 
reply : — 

44 You can schwimmen, I not." 

44 Betcher life I can schwimmen," the other mocks. 

And the girl walks off, angry and hurt. 

"An' I can walk on my hands," the tormentor 



A SEASIDE EPISODE 35 

calls after her. " Say, you greenhorn, why don'tcher 
look?" 

The girl keeps straight on, vowing that she would 
never walk with that rude boy again, neither by land 
nor sea, not even though the waters should part at his 
bidding. 

I am forgetting the more serious business which had 
brought us to Crescent Beach. While we children dis- 
ported ourselves like mermaids and mermen in the 
surf, our respective fathers dispensed cold lemonade, 
hot peanuts, and pink popcorn, and piled up our re- 
spective fortunes, nickel by nickel, penny by penny. 
I was very proud of my connection with the public 
life of the beach. I admired greatly our shining soda 
fountain, the rows of sparkling glasses, the pyramids 
of oranges, the sausage chains, the neat white counter, 
and the bright array of tin spoons. It seemed to me 
that none of the other refreshment stands on the 
beach — there were a few — were half so attractive 
as ours. I thought my father looked very well in a 
long white apron and shirt sleeves. He dished out ice 
cream with enthusiasm, so I supposed he was getting 
rich. It never occurred to me to compare his present 
occupation with the position for which he had been 
originally destined — that of a scholar ; or if I thought 
about it, I was just as well content, for by this time 
I had by heart my father's saying, " America is not 
Polotzk." All occupations were respectable, all men 
were equal, in America. 

If I admired the soda fountain and the sausage 
chains, I almost worshipped the partner, Mr. Wilner. 
I was content to stand for an hour at a time watching 
him make potato chips. In his cook's cap and apron, 
with a ladle in his hand and a smile on his face, he 
moved about with the greatest agility, whisking his 
raw materials out of nowhere, dipping into his bub- 



36 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND \ 

bling kettle with a flourish, and bringing forth the 
finished product with a caper. Such potato chips were 
not to be had anywhere else on Crescent Beach. Thin 
as tissue paper, crisp as dry snow, and salt as the 
sea — such thirst-producing, lemonade-selling, nickel- 
bringing potato chips only Mr. Wilner could make. 
On holidays, when dozens of family parties came out 
by every train from town, he could hardly keep up 
with the demand for his potato chips. And with a 
waiting crowd around him our partner was at his 
best. He was as voluble as he was skilful, and as witty 
as he was voluble ; at least so I guessed from the laugh- 
ter that frequently drowned his voice. I could not 
understand his jokes, but if I could get near enough to 
watch his lips and his smile and his merry eyes, I was 
happy. That any one could talk so fast, and in Eng- 
lish, was marvel enough, but that this prodigy should 
belong to our establishment was a fact to thrill me. I 
had never seen anything like Mr. Wilner, except a 
wedding jester ; but then he spoke common Yiddish. 
So proud was I of the talent and good taste displayed 
at our stand that if my father beckoned to me in the 
crowd and sent me on an errand, I hoped the people 
noticed that I, too, was connected with the establish- 
ment. 

And all this splendor and glory and distinction came 
to a sudden end. There was some trouble about a 
license — some fee or fine — there was a storm in the 
night that damaged the soda fountain and other fix- 
tures — there was talk and consultation between the 
houses of Antin and Wilner — and the promising 
partnership was dissolved. No more would the merry 
partner gather the crowd on the beach ; no more would 
the twelve young Wilners gambol like mermen and 
mermaids in the surf. And the less numerous tribe of 
Antin must also say farewell to the jolly seaside life ; 



A SEASIDE EPISODE 37 

for men in such humble business as my father's carry 
their families, along with their other earthly goods, 
wherever they go, after the manner of the gypsies. 
We had driven a feeble stake into the sand. The 
jealous Atlantic, in conspiracy with the Sunday law, 
had torn it out. We must seek our luck elsewhere. 



CHAPTER VI 

SCHOOL AT LAST 

In Polotzk we had supposed that " America " was 
practically synonymous with "Boston." When we 
landed in Boston, the horizon was pushed back, and 
we annexed Crescent Beach. And now, espying other 
lands of promise, we took possession of the province 
of Chelsea, in the name of our necessity. 

In Chelsea, as in Boston, we made our stand in the 
wrong end of the town. Arlington Street was inhabited 
by poor Jews, poor Negroes, and a sprinkling of poor 
Irish. The side streets leading from it were occupied 
by more poor Jews and Negroes. It was a proper lo- 
cality for a man without capital to do business. My 
father rented a tenement with a store in the basement. 
He put in a few barrels of flour and of sugar, a few 
boxes of crackers, a few gallons of kerosene, an as- 
sortment of soap of the " save the coupon " brands ; 
in the cellar, a few barrels of potatoes, and a pyramid 
of kindling-wood ; in the showcase, an alluring dis- 
play of penny candy. He put out his sign, with a gilt- 
lettered warning of " Strictly Cash," and proceeded to 
give credit indiscriminately; which was the regular 
way to do business on Arlington Street. 

If my father knew the tricks of the trade, my mother 
could be counted on to throw all her talent and tact 
into the business. Of course she had no English yet, 
but as she could perform the acts of weighing, meas- 
uring, and mental computation of fractions mechani- 
cally, she was able to give her whole attention to the 
dark mysteries of the language, as intercourse with 



SCHOOL AT LAST 39 

her customers gave her opportunity. In this she made 
such rapid progress that she soon lost all sense of dis- 
advantage, and conducted herself behind the counter 
very much as if she were back in her old store in Po- 
lotzk. It was far more cosey than Polotzk — at least, 
so it seemed to me ; for behind the store was the kit- 
chen, where, in the intervals of slack trade, she did 
her cooking and washing. Arlington Street custom- 
ers were used to waiting while the storekeeper salted 
the soup or rescued a loaf from the oven. 

Once more Fortune favored my family with a thin 
little smile, and my father, in reply to a friendly in- 
quiry, would say, " One makes a living," with a shrug 
of the shoulders that added " but nothing to boast of." 
It was characteristic of my attitude toward bread-and- 
butter matters that this contented me, and I felt free 
to devote myself to the conquest of my new world. 
Looking back to those critical first years, I see myself 
always behaving like a child let loose in a garden to 
play and dig and chase the butterflies. Occasionally, 
indeed, I was stung by the wasp of family trouble ; 
but I knew a healing ointment — my faith in America. 
My father had come to America to make a living. 
America, which was free and fair and kind, must 
presently yield him what he sought. I had come to 
America to see a new world, and I followed my own 
ends with the utmost assiduity ; only, as I ran out to 
explore, I would look back to see if my house were in 
order behind me — if my family still kept its head 
above water. 

My early letters to my Russian friends were filled 
with boastful descriptions of the glories of my new 
country. No native citizen of Chelsea took such pride 
and delight in its institutions as I did. It required no 
fife and drum corps, no Fourth of July procession, to 
set me tingling with patriotism. Even the common 



40 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

agents and instruments of municipal life, such as the 
letter carrier and the fire engine, I regarded with a 
measure of respect. I know what I thought of people 
who said that Chelsea was a very small, dull, unas- 
piring town, with no discernible excuse for a separate 
name or existence. 

The apex of my civic pride and personal content- 
ment was reached on the bright September morning 
when I entered the public school. That day I must 
always remember, even if I live to be so old that I 
cannot tell my name. To most people their first day 
at school is a memorable occasion. In my case the 
importance of the day was a hundred times magnified, 
on account of the years I had waited, the road I had 
come, and the conscious ambitions I entertained. 

Who were my companions on my first day at school ? 
Whose hand was in mine, as I stood, overcome with 
awe, by the teacher's desk, and whispered my name 
as my father prompted ? Was it Frieda's steady, ca- 
pable hand ? Was it her loyal heart that throbbed, 
beat for beat with mine, as it had done through all 
our childish adventures? Frieda's heart did throb 
that day, but not with tny emotions. My heart pulsed 
with joy and pride and ambition ;^ in her heart long- 
ing fought with abnegation. For I was led to the 
schoolroom, with its sunshine aiid its singing and the 
teacher's cheery smile ; while she was led to the work- 
shop, with its foul air, care-lined faces, and the fore- 
man's stern command. Our going to school was the 
fulfilment of my father's best promises to us, and 
Frieda's share in it was to fashion and fit the calico 
frocks in which the baby sister and I made our first 
appearance in a public schoolroom. 

I remember to this day the gray pattern of the 
calico, so affectionately did I regard it as it hung upon 
the wall — my consecration robe awaiting the beatific 



SCHOOL AT LAST 41 

day. And Frieda, I am sure, remembers it, too, so 
longingly did she regard it as the crisp, starchy 
breadths of it slid between her fingers. But whatever 
were her longings, she said nothing of them ; she bent 
over the sewing-machine humming an Old- World 
melody. And when the momentous day arrived, and 
the little sister and I stood up to be arrayed, it was 
Frieda herself who patted and smoothed my stiff new 
calico; who made me turn round and round, to see 
that I was perfect ; who stooped to pull out a disfigur- 
ing basting-thread. If there was anything in her heart 
besides sisterly love and pride and good-will, as we 
parted that morning, it was a sense of loss and a 
woman's acquiescence in her fate ; for we had been 
close friends, and now our ways would lie apart. Long- 
ing she felt, but no envy. She did not grudge me what 
she was denied. Until that morning we had been chil- 
dren together, but now, at the fiat of her destiny, she 
became a woman, with all a woman's cares ; whilst I, 
so little younger than she, was bidden to dance at the 
May festival of untroubled childhood. 

There had always been a distinction between us 
rather out of proportion to the difference in our years. 
Her good health and domestic instincts had made it 
natural for her to become my mother's right hand, 
in the years preceding the emigration, when there 
were no more servants or dependents. And when I 
failed as a milliner's apprentice, while Frieda made 
excellent progress at the dressmaker's, our fates, in- 
deed, were sealed. It was understood, even before we 
reached Boston, that she would go to work and I to 
school. No injustice was intended. My father sent us 
hand in hand to school, before he had ever thought 
of America. If, in America, he had been able to sup- 
port his family unaided, it would have been the cul- 
mination of his best hopes to see all his children at 



42 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

school, with equal advantages at home. But when he 
had done his best, and was still unable to provide 
even bread and shelter for us all, he was compelled to 
make us children self-supporting as fast as it was 
practicable. There was no choosing possible; Frieda 
was the oldest, the strongest, the best prepared, and 
the only one who was of legal age to be put to work. 

My father has nothing to answer for. He divided 
the world between his children in accordance with the 
laws of the country and the compulsion of his circum- 
stances. 

The two of us stood a moment in the doorway of 
the tenement house on Arlington Street, that wonder- 
ful September morning when I first went to school. 
It was I that ran away, on winged feet of joy and ex- 
pectation ; it was she whose feet were bound in the 
treadmill of daily toil. And I was so blind that I did 
not see that the glory lay on her, and not on me. 

Father himself conducted us to school. He would 
not have delegated that mission to the President of 
the United States. He had awaited the day with im- 
patience equal to mine, and the visions he saw as he 
hurried us over the sun-flecked pavements transcended 
all my dreams. Almost his first act on landing on 
American soil, three years before, had been his appli- 
cation for naturalization. He had taken the remaining 
steps in the process with eager promptness, and at the 
earliest moment allowed by the law, he became a citi- 
zen of the United States. It is true that he had left 
home in search of bread for his hungry family, but 
he went blessing the necessity that drove him to Amer- 
ica. The boasted freedom of the New World meant 
to him far more than the right to reside, travel, and 
work wherever he pleased ; it meant the freedom to 
speak his thoughts, to throw off the shackles of super- 



SCHOOL AT LAST 43 

stition, to test his own fate, unhindered by political 
or religious tyranny. 

Three years passed in sordid struggle and disap- 
pointment. He was not prepared to make a living 
even in America, where the day laborer eats wheat 
instead of rye. He had started life with a poor con- 
stitution that a youth of extreme poverty could not 
mend. Short rations and long hours in the confine- 
ment of the heder had been his portion from earliest 
boyhood ; and while he satisfied the family ambition 
for Hebrew scholarship, he received no practical train- 
ing that he could fall back on for a living. Add to 
this sorry equipment the immense hindrance of not 
knowing the language and customs of the new coun- 
try, and my father's repeated failures in business are 
largely accounted for. 

Had bread been the sole object of his quest, his 
first three years of America would have left him 
utterly disheartened. But for him, as for thousands 
like him from the Old World, America abounded in 
things that are more than bread. Intellectual oppor- 
tunities crowded him on all sides, and of these he 
sought to make the utmost use. His struggle for a 
bare living left him no time to take advantage of the 
public evening school ; but he lost nothing of what 
was to be learned through reading, through attend- 
ance at public meetings, through exercising the rights 
of citizenship. Even here he was hindered by a na- 
tural inability to acquire the English language. In 
time, indeed, he learned to read, to follow a conversa- 
tion or lecture ; but he never learned to write cor- 
rectly, and his pronunciation remains extremely for- 
eign to this day. 

If education, culture, the higher life were shining 
things to be worshipped from afar, he had still a means 
left whereby he could draw one step nearer to them. He 



44 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

could send his children to school, to learn #11 those 
things that he knew by fame to be desirable. The com- 
mon school, at least, perhaps high school ; for one or 
two, perhaps even college ! His children should be stu- 
dents, should fill his house with books and intellectual 
company ; and thus he would walk by proxy in the 
Elysian Fields of liberal learning. As for the children 
themselves, he knew no surer way to their advancement 
and happiness. 

So it was with a heart full of longing and hope that 
my father led us to school on that first day. He took 
Jong strides in his eagerness, the rest of us running and 
hopping to keep up. 

At last the four of us stood around the teacher's 
desk ; and my father, in his impossible English, gav$ 
us over in her charge, with some broken word of his 
hopes for us that his swelling heart could no longer 
contain. And I venture to say that Miss Nixon guessed 
what my father's best English could not convey. I 
think she divined that by the simple act of delivering 
our school certificates to her he took possession of 
America* 






CHAPTER VII 

INITIATION 

I was not a bit too large for my little chair and 
desk in the baby class, but my mind, of course, was 
too mature by six or seven years for the work. So as 
soon as I could understand what the teacher said in 
class, I was advanced to the second grade. This was 
within a week after Miss Nixon took me in hand. 
Rapid progress, that ; but Miss Nixon knew her busi- 
ness, and I dare say I helped. 

There were about half a dozen of us beginners in 
English, in age from six to fifteen. Miss Nixon made 
a special class of us, and aided us so skilfully and ear- 
nestly in our endeavors to " see-a-cat," and " hear-a-dog- 
bark," and " look-at-the-hen," that we turned over page 
after page of the ravishing history, eager to find out how 
the common world looked, smelled, and tasted in the 
strange speech. The teacher knew just when to let us 
help each other out with a word in our own tongue, — 
it happened that we were all Jews, — and so, working 
all together, we actually covered more ground in a 
lesson than the native classes, composed entirely of 
the little tots. 

But we stuck — stuck fast — at the definite article ; 
and sometimes the lesson resolved itself into a species of 
lingual gymnastics, in which we all looked as if we meant 
to bite our tongues off. Miss Nixon was pretty, and she 
must have looked well with her white teeth showing in 
the act ; but at the time I was too solemnly occupied to 
admire her looks. I did take great pleasure in her smile 
of approval, whenever I pronounced well; and her pa- 



46 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

tience and perseverance in struggling with us over that 
thick little word are becoming to her even now, after 
fifteen years. It is not her fault if any of us to-day give 
a buzzing sound to the dreadful English th. 

Whenever the teachers did anything special to help 
me over my private difficulties, my gratitude went out 
to them, silently. It meant so much to me that they 
halted the lesson to give me a lift, that I needs must 
love them for it. Dear Miss Carrol, of the second 
grade, would be amazed to hear what small things I 
remember, all because I was so impressed at the time 
with her readiness and sweetness in taking notice of 
my difficulties. 

Says Miss Carrol, looking straight at me : — 

" If Johnnie has three marbles, and Charlie has 
twice as many, how many marbles has Charlie?" 

I raise my hand for permission to speak. 

" Teacher, I don't know vhat is tvice." 

Teacher beckons me to her, and whispers to me the 
meaning of the strange word, and I am able to write 
the sum correctly. It 's all in the day's work with her; 
with me, it is a special act of kindness and efficiency* 

She whom I found in the next grade became so 
dear a friend that I can hardly name her with the rest, 
though I mention none of them lightly. Her approval 
was always dear to me, first because she was " Teacher," 
and afterwards, as long as she lived, because she was 
my Miss Dillingham. 

I remember to this day what a struggle we had over 
the word "water," Miss Dillingham and I. It seemed 
as if I could not give the sound of w; I said " vater " 
every time. Patiently my teacher worked with me, 
inventing mouth exercises for me, to get my stubborn 
lips to produce that w; and when at last I could say 
u village " and " water " in rapid alternation, without 
misplacing the two initials, that memorable word was 



INITIATION 47 

sweet on my lips. For we had conquered, and Teacher 
was pleased. 

There is a record of my early progress in English 
much better than my recollections, however accurate 
and definite these may be. I have several reasons for 
introducing it here. First, it shows what the Russian 
Jew can do with an adopted language ; next, it proves 
that vigilance of our public-school teachers of which 
I spoke ; and last, I am proud of it ! That is an un- 
necessary confession, but I could not be satisfied to 
insert the record here, with my vanity unavowed. 

This is the document, copied from an educational 
journal, a tattered copy of which lies in my lap as I 
write — treasured for fifteen years, you see, by my 
vanity. 

Editor " Primary Education " : — 

This is the uncorrected paper of a Russian child twelve 
years old, who had studied English only four months. She 
had never, until September, been to school even in her own 
country and has heard English spoken only at school. I 
shall be glad if the paper of my pupil and the above ex- 
planation may appear in your paper. 

M. S. Dillingham. 
Chelsea, Mass. 

SNOW 

Snow is frozen moisture which comes from the clouds. 

Now the snow is coming down in feather-flakes, which 
makes nice snow-balls. But there is still one kind of snow 
more. This kind of snow is called snow-crystals, for it comes 
down in little curly balls. These snow-crystals are n't quiet 
as good for snow-balls as feather-flakes, for they (the snow- 
crystals) are dry: so they can't keep together as feather- 
flakes do. 

The snow is dear to some children for they like sleighing. 

As I said at the top — the snow comes from tbe clouds. 

Now the trees are bare, and no flowers are to see in the 



48 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

fields and gardens, (we all know why) and the whole world 
seems like asleep without the happy birds songs which 
left us till spring. But the snow which drove away all 
these pretty and happy things, try, (as I think) not to make 
us at all unhappy ; they covered up the branches of the 
trees, the fields, the gardens and houses, and the whole 
world looks like dressed in a beautiful white — instead of 
green — dress, with the sky looking down on it with a pale 
face. 

And so the people can find some joy in it, too, without 
the happy summer. 

Mary Antin. 

And now that it stands there, with her name over 
it, I am ashamed of my flippant talk about vanity. 
More to me than all the praise I could hope to win by 
the conquest of fifty languages is the association of 
this dear friend with my earliest efforts at writing; 
and it pleases me to remember that to her I owe my 
very first appearance in print. Vanity is the least 
part of it, when I remember how she called me to her 
desk, one day after school was out, and showed me my 
composition — my own words, that I had written out 
of my own head — printed out, clear black and white, 
with my name at the end ! Nothing so wonderful had 
ever happened to me before. My whole consciousness 
was suddenly transformed. I suppose that was the 
moment when I became a writer. I always loved to 
write, — I wrote letters whenever I had an excuse, — 
yet it had never occurred to me to sit down and write 
my thoughts for no person in particular, merely to 
put the world on paper. But now, as I read my own 
words, in a delicious confusion, the idea was born. I 
stared at my name : Mary Antin. Was that really 
I? The printed characters composing it seemed 
strange to me all of a sudden. If that was my name, 
and those were the words out of my own head, what 



INITIATION 49 

relation did it all have to me y who was alone there 
with Miss Dillingham, and the printed page between 
us ? Why, it meant that I could write again, and see 
my writing printed for people to read ! I could write 
many, many, many things: I could write a book! 
The idea was so huge, so bewildering, that my mind 
scarcely could accommodate it. 

I do not know what my teacher said to me ; prob- 
ably very little. It was her way to say only a little, 
and look at me, and trust me to understand. Once 
she had occasion to lecture me about living a shut-up 
life ; she wanted me to go outdoors. I had been re- 
peatedly scolded and reproved on that score by other 
people, but I had only laughed, saying that I was too 
happy to change my ways. But when Miss Dilling- 
ham spoke to me, I saw that it was a serious matter; 
and yet she only said a few words, and looked at me 
with that smile of hers that was Only half a smile, and 
the rest a meaning. 

I never heard of any one who was so watched and 
coaxed, so passed along from hand to helping hand, 
as was I. I always had friends. They sprang up 
everywhere, a& if they had stood waiting for me to 
come. So here was my teacher, the moment she saw 
that I could give a good paraphrase of her talk oh 
44 Snow," bent on finding out what more I could do. 
One day she asked me if I had ever written poetry, 
f hkd not, but I went home and tried. I believe it 
was more snow, and I know it was wretched. I wish 
I could produce a copy of that early effusion ; it would 
prove that my judgment is not severe. Wretched it 
was, — worse, a great deal, than reams of poetry that 
is written by children about whom there is no fuss 
made. Bat Miss Dillingham was not discouraged. 
She saw that I had no idea of metre, so she proceeded 
to teach me. We repeated miles of poetry together, 



50 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

smooth lines that sang themselves, mostly out of Long- 
fellow. Then I would go home and write — oh, about 
the snow in our back yard ! — but when Miss Dilling- 
ham came to read my verses, they limped and they 
lagged and they dragged, and there was no tune that 
would fit them. 

At last came the moment of illumination : I saw 
where my trouble lay. I had supposed that my lines 
matched when they had an equal number of syllables, 
taking no account of accent. Now I knew better; 
now I could write poetry ! The everlasting snow 
melted at last, and the mud puddles dried in the 
spring sun, and the grass on the common was green, 
and still I wrote poetry ! Again I wish I had some 
example of my springtime rhapsodies, the veriest 
rubbish of the sort that ever a child perpetrated, 
Lizzie McDee, who had red hair and freckles, and a 
Sunday-school manner on weekdays, and was below 
me in the class, did a great deal better. We used to 
compare verses ; and while I do not remember that I 
ever had the grace to own that she was the better 
poet, I do know that I secretly wondered why the 
teachers did not invite her to stay after school and 
study poetry, while they took so much pains with me. 
But so it was always with me: somebody did some- 
thing for me all the time. 

Making fair allowance for my youth, retarded edu- 
cation, and strangeness to the language, it must still 
be admitted that I never wrote good verse. But I 
loved to read it. My half-hours with Miss Dilling- 
ham were full of delight for me, quite apart from my 
new-born ambition to become a writer. What, then, 
was my joy, when Miss Dillingham, just before lock- 
ing up her desk one evening, presented me with a 
volume of Longfellow's poems! It was a thin volume 
of selections, but to me it was a bottomless treasure. 



INITIATION 51 

I had never owned a book before. The sense of pos- 
session alone was a source of bliss, and this book I 
already knew and loved. And so Miss Dillingham, 
who was my first American friend, and who first put 
my name in print, was also the one to start my 
library. Deep is my regret when I consider that she 
was gone before I had given much of an account of 
all her gifts of love and service to me. 

About the middle of the year I was promoted to 
the grammar school. Then it was that I walked on 
air. For I said to myself that I was a student now, 
in earnest, not merely a school-girl learning to spell 
and cipher. I was going to learn out-of-the-way 
things, things that had nothing to do with ordinary 
life — things to know. When I walked home after- 
noons, with the great big geography book under my 
arm, it seemed to me that the earth was conscious of 
my step. Sometimes I carried home half the books 
in my desk, not because I should need them, but be- 
cause I loved to hold them ; and also because I loved 
to be seen carrying books. It was a badge of scholar- 
ship, and I was proud of it. I remembered the days 
in Vitebsk when I used to watch my cousin Hirshel 
start for school in the morning, every thread of his 
student's uniform, every worn copybook in his satchel, 
glorified in my envious eyes. And now I was myself 
as he: aye, greater than he; for I knew English, 
and I could write poetry. 



CHAPTER VIII 

" MY COtJNTRY " 

The public school has done its best for us foreign- 
ers, and for the country, when it has made us into 
good Americans. I am glad it is mitie to tell how the 
miracle was wrought in one case. You shall be glad 
to hear of it, you born Americans ; for it is the story 
of the growth of your country ; of the flocking of your 
brothers and sisters from the far ends of the earth to 
the flag you love ; of the recruiting of your armies of 
workers, thinkers, and leaders. And you will be glad 
to hear of it, my comrades in adoption; for it is a re- 
hearsal of your own experience, the thrill" and wonder 
of which your own hearts have felt. 

How long would you say, wise reader, it takes to 
make an American ? By the middle of my second 
year in school I had reached the sixth grade. When, 
after the Christmas holidays, we began to study the 
life of Washington, running through a summary of 
the Revolution, and the early days of the Republic, 
it seemed to me that all my reading and study had 
been idle until then. The reader, the arithmetic, the 
song book, that had so fascinated itie until now, be- 
came suddenly sober exercise books, tools wherewith 
to hew a way to the source of inspiration. When the 
teacher read to us out of a big book with many book- 
marks in it, I sat rigid with attention in my little , 
chair, my hands tightly clasped on the edge of my 
desk ; and I painfully held my breath, to prevent 
sighs of disappointment escaping, as I saw the teacher 
skip the parts between the bookmarks. When the 



"MY COUNTRY " 53 

class read, and it came my turn, my voice shook and 
the book trembled in my hands. I could not pro- 
nounce the name of George Washington without a 
pause. Never had I prayed, never had I chanted the 
songs of David, never had I called upon the Most 
Holy, in such utter reverence and worship as I re- 
peated the simple sentences of my child's story of the 
patriot I gazed with adoration at the portraits of 
George and Martha Washington, till I could see them 
with my eyes shut. And whereas formerly my self- 
consciousness had bordered on conceit, and I thought 
myself an uncommon person, parading my school- 
books through the streets, and swelling with pride 
when a teacher detained me in conversation, now I 
grew humble all at once, seeing how insignificant I 
was beside the Great. 

As I read about the noble boy who would not tell 
a lie to save himself from punishment, I was for the 
first time truly repentant of my sins. Formerly I had 
fasted and prayed and made sacrifice on the Day of 
Atonement, but it was more than half play, in mim- 
icry of my elders. I had no real horror of sin, and I 
knew so many ways of escaping punishment. I am 
sure my family, my neighbors, my teachers in Polotzk 
— all my world, in fact — strove together, by example 
and precept, to teach me goodness. But goodness, as 
I had known it, was not inimitable. One could be 
downright good if one really wanted to. One could be 
learned if one had books and teachers. But a human 
being strictly good, perfectly wise, and unfailingly 
valiant, all at the same time, I had never heard or 
dreamed of. This wonderful George Washington was 
as inimitable as he was irreproachable. Even if I had 
never, never told a lie, I could not compare myself to 
George Washington ; for I was not brave — I was 
afraid to go out when snowballs whizzed — and I 



54 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

could never be the First President of the United States. 

So I was forced to revise my own estimate of myself. 
But the twin of my new-born humility, paradoxical as 
it may seem, was a sense of dignity I had never known 
before. For if I found that I was a person of small 
consequence, I discovered at the same time that I was 
more nobly related than I had ever supposed. I had 
relatives and friends who were notable people by the 
old standards, — I had never been ashamed of my 
family, — but this George Washington, who died 
long before I was born, was like a king in greatness, 
and he and I were Fellow Citizens. There was a great 
deal about Fellow Citizens in the patriotic literature 
we read at this time ; and I knew from my father 
how he was a Citizen, through the process of naturali- 
zation, and how I also was a citizen, by virtue of my 
relation to him. Undoubtedly I was a Fellow Citizen, 
and George Washington was another. It thrilled me 
to realize what sudden greatness had fallen on me ; 
and at the same time it sobered me, as with a sense 
of responsibility. I strove to conduct myself as be- 
fitted a Fellow Citizen. 

Before books came into my life, I was given to star- 
gazing and daydreaming. When books were given me, 
I fell upon them as a glutton pounces on his meat after 
a period of enforced starvation. I lived with my nose 
in a book, and took no notice of the alternations of the 
sun and stars. But now, after the advent of George 
Washington and the American Revolution, I began 
to dream again. I strayed on the common after school 
instead of hurrying home to read. I hung on fence 
rails, my pet book forgotten under my arm, and gazed 
off to the yellow-streaked February sunset, and be- 
yond, and beyond. I was no longer the central figure 
of my dreams ; the dry weeds in the lane crackled be- 
neath the tread of Heroes. 



"MY COUNTRY" 55 

What more could America give a child ? Ah, much 
more ! As I read how the patriots planned the Revo- 
lution, and the women gave their sons to die in battle, 
and the heroes led to victory, and the rejoicing people 
set up the Republic, it dawned on me gradually what 
was meant by my country. The people all desiring 
noble things, and striving for them together, defy- 
ing their oppressors, giving their lives for each other 
— all this it was that made my country. It was not 
a thing that I understood ; I could not go home and 
tell Frieda about it, as I told her other things I learned 
at school. But I knew one could say " my country " 
and feel it, as one felt " God " or " myself." My 
teacher, my schoolmates, Miss Dillingham, George 
Washington himself could not mean more than I 
when they said " my country," after I had once felt it. 
For the country was for all the citizens, and I was a 
Citizen. And when we stood up to sing " America," 
I shouted the words with all my might. I was in very 
earnest proclaiming to the world my love for my new- 
found country. 

" I love thy rocks and rills, 
Thy woods and templed hills." 

Boston Harbor, Crescent Beach, Chelsea Square — all 
was hallowed ground to me. As the day approached 
when the school was to hold exercises in honor of 
Washington's Birthday, the halls resounded at all 
hours with the strains of patriotic songs ; and I, who 
was a model of the attentive pupil, more than once lost 
my place in the lesson as I strained to hear, through 
closed doors, some neighboring class rehearsing " The 
Star-Spangled Banner." If the doors happened to 
open, and the chorus broke out unveiled — 

" O ! say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave 
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave ? " — 



56 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

delicious tremors ran up and down my spine, and I was 
faint with suppressed enthusiasm. 

On the day of the Washington celebration I recited 
a poem that I had composed in my enthusiasm. But 
" composed " is not the word. The process of putting 
on paper the sentiments that seethed in my soul was 
really very discomposing. I dug the words out of my 
heart, squeezed the rhymes out of my brain, forced the 
missing syllables out of their hiding-places in the dic- 
tionary. May I never again know such travail of the 
spirit as I endured during the fevered days when I 
was engaged on the poem. It was not as if I wanted to 
say that snow was white or grass was green. I could 
do that without a dictionary. It was a question now 
of the loftiest sentiments, of the most abstract truths, 
the names of which were very new in my vocabulary. 
It was necessary to use polysyllables, and plenty of 
them ; and where to find rhymes for such words as 
"tyranny," "freedom," and "justice," when you had 
less than two years' acquaintance with English ! The 
name I wished to celebrate was the most difficult 
of all. Nothing but "Washington" rhymed with 
" Washington." It was a most ambitious undertak- 
ing, but my heart could find no rest till it had pro- 
claimed itself to the world; so I wrestled with my diffi- 
culties, and spared not ink, till inspiration perched on 
my pen point, and my soul gave up its best. 

When I had done, I was myself impressed with the 
length, gravity, and nobility of my poem. My father 
was overcome with emotion as he read it. His hands 
trembled as he held the paper to the light, and the 
mist gathered in his eyes. My teacher, Miss Dwight, 
was plainly astonished at my performance, and said 
many kind things, and asked many questions ; all of 
which I took very solemnly, like one who had been 
in the clouds and returned to earth with a sign upon 



"MY COUNTRY" 57 

him. When Miss Dwight asked me to read my poem 
to the class on the day of celebration, I readily con- 
sented. It was not in me to refuse a chance to tell my 
schoolmates what I thought of George Washington. 

I was not a heroic figure when I stood up in front 
of the class to pronounce the praises of the Father of 
his Country. Thin, pale, and hollow, with a shadow 
of short black curls on my brow, and the staring look 
of prominent eyes, I must have looked more fright- 
ened than imposing. My dress added no grace to my 
appearance. " Plaids" were in fashion, and my frock 
was of a red-and-green " plaid " that had a ghastly 
effect on my complexion. I hated it when I thought 
of it, but on the great day I did not know I had any 
dress on. Heels clapped together, and hands glued to 
my sides, I lifted up my voice in praise of George 
Washington. It was not much of a voice ; like my 
hollow cheeks, it suggested consumption. My pronun- 
ciation was faulty, my declamation flat. But I had 
the courage of my convictions. I was face to face 
with twoscore Fellow Citizens, in clean blouses and 
extra frills. I must tell them what George Washing- 
ton had done for their country — for our country — 
for me. 

I can laugh now at the impossible metres, the gran- 
diose phrases, the verbose repetitions of my poem. 
Years ago I must have laughed at it, when I threw 
my only copy into the wastebasket. The copy I am 
now turning over was loaned me by Miss Dwight, 
who faithfully preserved it all these years, for the 
sake, no doubt, of what I strove to express when I 
laboriously hitched together those dozen and more 
ungraceful stanzas. But to the forty Fellow Citizens 
sitting in rows in front of me it was no laughing mat- 
ter. Even the bad boys sat in attitudes of attention, 
hypnotized by the solemnity of my demeanor. If they 



58 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

got any inkling of what the hail of big words was 
about, it must have been through occult suggestion. 
I fixed their eighty eyes with my single stare, and 
gave it to them, stanza after stanza, with such em- 
phasis as the lameness of the lines permitted. 

He whose courage, will, amazing bravery, 
Did free his land from a despot's rule, 

From man's greatest evil, almost slavery, 
And all that 's taught in tyranny's school, 

Who gave his land its liberty, 
Who was he ? 

'T was he who e'er will be our pride, 

Immortal Washington, 
Who always did in truth confide, 

We hail our Washington ! 

The best of the verses were no better than these, 
but the children listened. They had to. Presently I 
gave them news, declaring that Washington 

Wrote the famous Constitution; sacred 's the hand 

That this blessed guide to man had given, which says, " One 

And all of mankind are alike, excepting none." 

This was received in respectful silence, possibly be- 
cause the other Fellow Citizens were as hazy about 
historical facts as I at this point. " Hurrah for Wash- 
ington ! " they understood, and " Three cheers for the 
Red, White, and Blue ! " was only to be expected on 
that occasion. But there ran a special note through 
my poem — a thought that only Israel Rubinstein or 
Beckie Aronovitch could have fully understood, be- 
sides myself. For I made myself the spokesman of 
the "luckless sons of Abraham," saying — 

Then we weary Hebrew children at last found rest 
In the land where reigned Freedom, and like a nest 
To homeless birds your land proved to us, and therefore 
Will we gratefully sing your praise evermore. 



"MY COUNTRY" 59 

The boys and girls who had never been turned 
away from any door because of their father's religion 
sat as if fascinated in their places. But they woke up 
and applauded heartily when I was done, following 
the example of Miss Dwight, who wore the happy 
face which meant that one of her pupils had done 
well. 

The recitation was repeated, by request, before 
several other classes, and the applause was equally 
prolonged at each repetition. After the exercises I 
was surrounded, praised, questioned, and made much 
of, by teachers as well as pupils. Plainly I had not 
poured my praise of George Washington into deaf 
ears. The teachers asked me if anybody had helped 
me with the poem. The girls invariably asked, " Mary 
Antin, how could you think of all those words ?" 
None of them thought of the dictionary ! 



CHAPTER IX 

IN NEWSPAPER ROW 

If I had been satisfied with my poem in the first 
place, the applause with which it was received by my 
teachers and schoolmates convinced me that I had 
produced a very fine thing indeed. So the person, who- 
ever it was, — perhaps my father — who suggested 
that my tribute to Washington ought to be printed, 
did not find me difficult to persuade. When I had 
achieved an absolutely perfect copy of my verses, at 
the expense of a dozen sheets of blue-ruled note paper, 
I crossed the Mystic River to Boston and boldly in- 
vaded Newspaper Row. 

It never occurred to me to send my manuscript by 
mail. In fact, it has never been my way to send a 
delegate where I could go myself. Consciously or un- 
consciously, I have always acted on the motto of a 
wise man who was one of the dearest friends that Bos- 
ton kept for me until I came. " Personal presence 
moves the world," said the great Dr. Hale; and I 
went in person to beard the editor in his armchair. 

From the ferry slip to the offices of the Boston 
Transcript the way was long, strange, and full of 
perils ; but I kept resolutely on up Hanover Street, 
being familiar with that part of my route, till I came 
to a puzzling corner. There I stopped, utterly bewil- 
dered by the tangle of streets, the roar of traffic, the 
giddy swarm of pedestrians. With the precious manu- 
script tightly clasped, I balanced myself on the curb- 
stone, afraid to plunge into the boiling vortex of the 
crossing. Every time I made a start, a clanging street 



IN NEWSPAPER ROW 6. 

car snatched up the way. I could not even pick out 
my street ; the unobtrusive street signs were lost to 
my unpractised sight in the glaring confusion of store 
signs and advertisements. If I accosted a pedestrian 
to ask the way, I had to speak several times before I 
was heard. Jews, hurrying by with bearded chins on 
their bosoms and eyes intent, shrugged their shoul- 
ders at the name Transcript, and shrugged till they 
were out of sight. Italians sauntering behind their 
fruit carts answered my inquiry with a lift of the head 
that made their earrings gleam, and a wave of the 
hand that referred me to all four points of the com- 
pass at once. I was trying to catch the eye of the 
tall policeman who stood grandly in the middle of 
the crossing, a stout pillar around which the waves 
of traffic broke, when deliverance bellowed in my 
ear. 

"Herald, Globe, Record, Tra-avel-erf Eh? Whatcher 
want, sis ? " The tall newsboy had to stoop to me. 
"Transcript? Sure!" And in half a twinkling he had 
picked me out a paper from his bundle. When I ex- 
plained to him, he good-naturedly tucked the paper in 
again, piloted me across, unravelled the end of Wash- 
ington Street for me, and with much pointing out of 
landmarks, headed me for my destination, my nose 
seeking the spire of the Old South Church. 

I found the Transcript building a waste of corri- 
dors tunnelled by a maze of staircases. On the glazed- 
glass doors were many signs with the names or nick- 
names of many persons: "City Editor"; "Beggars 
and Peddlers not Allowed." The nameless world not 
included in these categories was warned off, forbidden 
to be or do: "Private — No Admittance"; "Don't 
Knock." And the various inhospitable legends on the 
doors and walls were punctuated by frequent cuspi- 
dors on the floor. There was no sign anywhere of the 



j2 at school in the promised land 

welcome which I, as an author, expected to find in 
the home of a newspaper. 

I was descending from the top story to the street for 
the seventh time, trying to decide what kind of editor 
a patriotic poem belonged to, when an untidy boy 
carrying broad paper streamers and whistling shrilly, 
in defiance of an express prohibition on the wall, 
bustled through the corridor and left a door ajar. I 
slipped in behind him, and^f ound myself in a room full 
of editors. 

I was a little surprised at the appearance of the 
editors. I had imagined my editor would look like 
Mr. Jones, the principal of my school, whose coat was 
always buttoned, and whose finger nails were beauti- 
ful. These people were in shirt sleeves, and they 
smoked, and they didn't politely turn in their revolv- 
ing chairs when I came in, and ask, " What can I do 
for you ? " 

The room was noisy with typewriters, and nobody 
heard my "Please, can you tell me." At last one of 
the machines stopped, and the operator thought he 
heard something in the pause. He looked up through 
his own smoke. I guess he thought he saw something, 
for he stared. It troubled me a little to have him stare 
so. I realized suddenly that the hand in which I car- 
ried my manuscript was moist, and I was afraid it 
would make marks on the paper. I held out the manu- 
script to the editor, explaining that it was a poem 
about George Washington, and would he please print 
it in the Transcript. 

There was something queer about that particular 
editor. The way he stared and smiled made me feel 
about eleven inches high, and my voice kept growing 
smaller and smaller as I neared the end of my speech. 

At last he spoke, laying down his pipe, and sitting 
back at his ease. 



IN NEWSPAPER ROW 63 

" So you Lave brought us a poem, my child ?" 

44 It 's about George Washington," I repeated im- 
pressively. " Don't you want to read it? " 

44 I should be delighted, my dear, but the fact 
is—" 

He did not take my paper. He stood up and called 
across the room. 

64 Say, Jack ! here is a young lady who has brought 
us a poem — about George Washington. — Wrote it 
yourself, my dear ? — Wrote it all herself. What shall 
we do with her ? " 

Mr. Jack came over, and another man. My editor 
made me repeat my business, and they all looked in- 
terested, but nobody, took my paper from me. They 
put their hands into their pockets, and my hand kept 
growing clammier all the time. The three seemed to 
be consulting, but I could not understand what they 
said, or why Mr. Jack laughed. 

A fourth man, who had been writing busily at a 
desk near by, broke in on the consultation. 

"That's enough, boys," he said, "that's enough. 
Take the young lady to Mr. Hurd." 

Mr. Hurd, it was found, was away on a vacation, 
and of several other editors in several offices, to whom 
I was referred, none proved to be the proper editor to 
take charge of a poem about George Washington. At 
last an elderly editor suggested that as Mr. Hurd 
would be away for some time, I would do well to give 
up the Transcript and try the Herald, across the 
way. 

A little tired by my wanderings, and bewildered by 
the complexity of the editorial system, but still con- 
fident about my mission, I picked my way across Wash- 
ington Street and found the Herald offices. Here I 
had instant good lack. The first editor I addressed 
took my paper and invited me to a seat. He read my 



64 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

poem much more quickly than I could myself, and 
said it was very nice, and asked me some questions, 
and made notes on a slip of paper which he pinned 
to my manuscript. He said he would have my piece 
printed very soon, and would send me a copy of the 
issue in which it appeared. As I was going, I could 
not help giving the editor my hand, although I had 
not experienced any handshaking in Newspaper Row. 
I felt that as author and editor we were on a very 
pleasant footing, and I gave him my hand in token 
of comradeship. 

I had regained my full stature and something over, 
during this cordial interview, and when I stepped out 
into the street and saw the crowd intently studying 
the bulletin board I swelled out of all proportion. 
For I told myself that I, Mary Antin, was one of the 
inspired brotherhood who made newspapers so inter- 
esting. I did not know whether my poem would be 
put upon the bulletin board ; but at any rate, it would 
be in the paper, with my name at the bottom, like my 
story about " Snow " in Miss Dillingham's school 
journal. And all these people in the streets, and more, 
thousands of people — all Boston ! — would read my 
poem, and learn my name, and wonder who I was. I 
smiled to myself in delicious amusement when a man 
deliberately put me out of his path, as I dreamed my 
way through the jostling crowd ; if he only knew whom 
he was treating so unceremoniously ! 

When the paper with my poem in it arrived, the 
whole house pounced upon it at once. I was surprised 
to find that my verses were not all over the front page. 
The poem was a little hard to find, if anything, being 
tucked away in the middle of the voluminous sheet. 
But when we found it, it looked wonderful, just like 
real poetry, not at all as if somebody we knew had 
written it. It occupied a gratifying amount of space, 



IN NEWSPAPER ROW 65 

I and was introduced by a flattering biographical sketch 
of the author — the author/ — the material for which 
the friendly editor had artfully drawn from me during 
that happy interview. And my name, as I had prophe- 
sied, was at the bottom ! 

When the excitement in the house had subsided, 
my father took all the change out of the cash drawer 
and went to buy up the Herald. He did not count the 
pennies. He just bought Heralds, all he could lay his 
hands on, and distributed them gratis to all our friends, 
relatives, and acquaintances ; to all who could read, 
and to some who could not. For weeks he carried a 
clipping from the Herald in his breast pocket, and 
few were the occasions when he did not manage to 
introduce it into the conversation. He treasured that 
clipping as for years he had treasured the letters I 
wrote him from Polotzk. 

Although my father bought up most of the issue 
containing my poem, a few hundred copies were left 
to circulate among the general public, enough to 
spread the flame of my patriotic ardor and to enkin- 
dle a thousand sluggish hearts. Really, there was 
something more solemn than vanity in my satisfaction. 
Pleased as I was with my notoriety — and nobody but 
I knew how exceedingly pleased — I had a sober feel- 
ing about it all. I enjoyed being praised and admired 
and envied ; but what gave a divine flavor to my 
happiness was the idea that I had publicly borne 
testimony to the goodness of my exalted hero, to the 
greatness of my adopted country. I did not discount 
the homage of Arlington Street, because I did not 
properly rate the intelligence of its population. I took 
the admiration of my schoolmates without a grain of 
salt ; it was just so much honey to me. I could not know 
that what made me great in the eyes of my neighbors 
was that " there was a piece about me in the paper " ; 



66 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

it mattered very little to them what the " piece " was 
about. I thought they really admired my sentiments. 
On the street, in the schoolyard, I was pointed out. 
The people said, " That 's Mary Antin. She had her 
name in the paper." / thought they said, " This is 
she who loves her country and worships George 
Washington." 

To repeat, I was well aware that I was something 
of a celebrity, and took all possible satisfaction in 
the fact ; yet I gave my schoolmates no occasion to 
call me " stuck-up." My vanity did not express itself in 
strutting or wagging the head. I played tag and puss- 
in-the-corner in the schoolyard, and did everything 
that was comrade-like. But in the schoolroom I con- 
ducted myself gravely, as befitted one who was pre- 
paring for the noble career of a poet. 

When my teacher had visitors I was aware that I 
was the show pupil of the class. I was always made 
to recite, my compositions were passed around, and 
often I was called up on the platform — oh, climax 
of exaltation ! — to be interviewed by the distin- 
guished strangers ; while the class took advantage 
of the teachers distraction, to hold forbidden inter- 
course on matters not prescribed in the curriculum. 
When I returned to my seat, after such public audi- 
ence with the great, I looked to see if Lizzie McDee, 
who was my closest rival, was taking notice ; and 
Lizzie, who was a generous soul, generally smiled, 
and I was satisfied. 

Not but what I paid a price for my honors. With 
all my self-possession I had a certain capacity for 
shyness. Even when I arose to recite before the cus- 
tomary audience of my class I suffered from incipient 
stage fright, and my voice trembled over the first few 
words. When visitors were in the room I was even 
more troubled ; and when I was made the special ob- 



IN NEWSPAPER ROW 67 

ject of their attention my triumph was marred by- 
acute distress. If I was called up to speak to the 
visitors, forty pairs of eyes pricked me in the back as 
I went. I stumbled in the aisle, and knocked down 
things that were not at all in my way ; and my awk- 
wardness increasing my embarrassment, I would gladly 
have changed places with Lizzie or the bad boy in 
the back row ; anything, only to be less conspicuous. 
When I found myself shaking hands with an august 
Sehool-Committeeman, or a teacher from New York, 
the remnants of my self-possession vanished in awe ; 
and it wa3 in a very husky voice that I repeated, as 
I was asked, my name, lineage, and personal history. 
On the whole, I do not think that the School-Com- 
mitteeman found a very forward creature in the solemn- 
faced little girl with the tight curls and the terrible 
red-and-green " plaid." 

These awful audiences did not always end with the 
handshaking. Sometimes the great personages asked 
me to write to them, and exchanged addresses with 
me. Some of these correspondences continued through 
years, and were the source of much pleasure, on one 
side at least. And Arlington Street took notice when 
I received letters with important-looking or aristo- 
cratic-looking letterheads. Lizzie McDee also took 
notice. / saw to that. 



CHAPTEE X 

A NUMBER OF THINGS 

My sister and I continued to have part of our life 
in common for some time after she went to work. 
We formed ourselves into an evening school, she and 
I and the two youngsters, for the study of English 
and arithmetic. As soon as the supper dishes were 
put away, we gathered around the kitchen table, 
with books borrowed from school, and pencils sup- 
plied by my father with eager willingness. I was the 
teacher, the others the diligent pupils ; and the ear- 
nestness with which we labored was worthy of the 
great things we meant to achieve. Whether the re- 
sults were commensurate with our efforts I cannot 
say. I only know that Frieda's cheeks flamed with 
the excitement of reading English monosyllables ; and 
her eyes shone like stars on a moonless night when I 
explained to her how she and I and George Wash- 
ington were Fellow Citizens together. 

Inspired r by our studious evenings, what Frieda 
Antin would not be glad to sit all day bent over the 
needle, that the family should keep on its feet, and 
Mary continue at school? The morning ride on the 
ferryboat, when spring winds dimpled the river, may 
have stirred her heart with nameless longings, but 
when she took her place at the machine her lot was 
glorified to her, and she wanted to sing ; for the girls, 
the foreman, the boss, all talked about Mary Antin, 
whose poems were printed in an American newspaper. 
Wherever she went on her humble business, she was 
sure to hear her sister's name. For, with character- 



A NUMBER OF THINGS 69 

istic loyalty, the whole Jewish community claimed 
kinship with me, simply because I was a Jew ; and 
they made much of my small triumphs, and pointed 
to me with pride, just as they always do when a Jew 
distinguishes himself in any worthy way. Frieda, 
going home from work at sunset, when rosy buds 
beaded the shining stems, may have felt the weari- 
ness of those who toil for bread ; but when we opened 
our books after supper, her spirit revived afresh, and 
it was only when the lamp began to smoke that she 
thought of taking rest. 

At bedtime she and I chatted as we used to do 
when we were little girls in Polotzk ; only now, instead 
of closing our eyes to see imaginary wonders, accord- 
ing to a bedtime game of ours, we exchanged anec- 
dotes about the marvellous adventures of our Ameri- 
can life. My contributions on these occasions were 
boastful accounts, I have no doubt, of what I did at 
school, and in the company of school-committee men, 
editors, and other notables ; and Frieda's delight in 
my achievements was the very flower of her fine sym- 
pathy. As formerly, when I had been naughty and I 
invited her to share in my repentance, she used to 
join me in spiritual humility and solemnly dedicate 
herself to a better life; so now, when I was full of 
pride and ambition, she, too, felt the crown on her 
brows, and heard the applause of future generations 
murmuring in her ear. And so partaking of her sis- 
ter's glory, what Frieda Antin would not say that her 
portion was sufficient reward for a youth of toil ? 

I did not, like my sister, earn my bread in those 
days ; but let us say that I earned my salt, by sweep- 
ing, scrubbing, and scouring, on Saturdays, when there 
was no school. My mother's housekeeping was neces- 
sarily irregular, as she was pretty constantly occu- 
pied in the store ; so there was enough for us children 



70 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

to do to keep the bare rooms shining. Even here 
Frieda did the lion's share ; it used to take me all 
Saturday to accomplish what Frieda would do with 
half a dozen turns of her capable hands. I did not 
like housework, but I loved order ; so I polished win- 
dows with a will, and even got some fun out of scrub- 
bing, by laying out the floor in patterns and tracing 
them all around the room in a lively flurry of soap- 
suds. 

There is a joy that comes from doing common 
things well, especially if they seem hard to us. When 
I faced a day's housework I was half paralyzed with 
a sense of inability, and I wasted precious minutes 
walking around it, to see what a very hard task I had. 
But having pitched in and conquered, it gave me an 
exquisite pleasure to survey my work. My hair tousled 
and my dress tucked up, streaked arms bare to the 
elbow, I would step on my heels over the damp, clean 
boards, and pass my hand over chair rounds and table 
legs, to prove that no dust was left. I could not wait 
to put my dress in order before running out into the 
street to see how my windows shone. While it never 
got so that I looked forward to cleaning day, my 
dislike for Saturday gradually wore off, as I tasted, 
again and again, the delight of achievement in the 
field of broom and brush and stove polish. 

The stretch of weeks from June to September, 
when the schools were closed, would have been hard 
to fill in had it not been for the public library. At 
first I made myself a calendar of the vacation months, 
and every morning I tore off a day, and comforted 
myself with the decreasing number of vacation days. 
But after I discovered the public library I was not 
impatient for the reopening of school. The library 
did not open till one o'clock in the afternoon, and 
each reader was allowed to take out only one book 



A NUMBER OF THINGS 71 

at a time. Long before one o'clock I was to be seen 
on the library steps, waiting for the door of paradise 
to open. I spent hours in the reading-room, pleased 
with the atmosphere of books, with the order and 
quiet of the place, so unlike anything on Arlington 
Street. The sense of these things permeated my con- 
sciousness even when I was absorbed in a book, just 
as the rustle of pages turned and the tiptoe tread of 
the librarian reached my ear, without distracting my 
attention. Anything so wonderful as a library had 
never been in my life. It was even better than school 
in some ways. One could read and read, and learn 
and learn, as fast as one knew how, without being 
obliged to stop for stupid little girls and inattentive 
little boys to catch up with the lesson. When I went 
home from the library I had a book under my arm ; 
and I would finish it before the library opened next 
day, no matter till what hours of the night I burned 
my little lamp. 

What books did I read so diligently ? Pretty nearly 
everything that came to my hand. I dare say the 
librarian helped me select my books, but, curiously 
enough, I do not remember. Something must have 
directed me, for I read a great many of the books that 
are written for children. Of these I remember with 
the greatest delight Louisa Alcott's stories. Next to 
Miss Alcott's books in my esteem were boys' books 
of adventure, many of them by Horatio Alger; and I 
read all, I suppose, of the Rollo books, by Jacob 
Abbott. 

But that was not all. I read every kind of printed 
matter that came into the house, by design or accident. 
If a bundle came into the house wrapped in a stained 
old newspaper, I laboriously smoothed out the paper 
and read it through. I enjoyed it all, and found fault 
with nothing that I read. For in the beginning my 



72 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

appetite for print was so enormous that I could let 
nothing pass through my hands unread, while my taste 
was so crude that nothing printed could offend me. 

Good reading matter came into the house from one 
other source besides the library. The Yiddish news- 
papers of the day were excellent, and my father sub- 
scribed to the best of them. 

There was one book in the library over which I 
pored very often, and that was the enclyelopaedia. I 
turned usually to the names of famous people, begin- 
ning, of course, with George Washington. Oftenest 
of all I read the biographical sketches of my favorite 
authors, and felt that the worthies must have been 
glad to die just to have their names and histories 
printed out in the book of fame. It seemed to me the 
apotheosis of glory to be even briefly mentioned in an 
encyclopaedia. And there grew in me an enormous 
ambition that devoured all my other ambitions, which 
was no less than this : that I should live to know that 
after my death my name would surely be printed in 
the encyclopaedia. It was such a prodigious thing to 
expect that I kept the idea a secret even from myself, 
just letting it lie where it sprouted, in an unexplored 
corner of my busy brain. But it grew on me in spite 
of myself, till finally I could not resist the tempta- 
tion to study out the exact place in the encyclopaedia 
where my name would belong. I saw that it would 
come not far from " Alcott, Louisa M." ; and I cov- 
ered my face with my hands, to hide the silly, base- 
less joy in it. I practised saying my name in the 
encyclopaedic form, " Antin, Mary " ; and I realized 
that it sounded chopped off, and wondered if I might 
not annex a middle initial. I wanted to ask my teacher 
about it, but I was afraid I might betray my reasons. 
For, infatuated though I was with the idea of the 
greatness I might live to attain, I knew very well that 



A NUMBER OF THINGS 73 

thus far my claims to posthumous fame were ridicu- 
lously unfounded, and I did not want to be laughed at 
for my vanity. 

Summer days are long, and the evenings, we know, 
are as long as the lamp- wick. So, with all my reading, 
I had time to play ; and, with all my studiousness, I 
had the will to play. My favorite playmates were boys. 
It was but mild fun to play theatre in Bessie Finkle- 
stein's back yard, even if I had leading parts, which 
I made impressive by recitations in Russian, no word 
of which was intelligible to my audience. It was far 
better sport to play hide-and-seek with the boys, for 
I enjoyed the use of my limbs — what there was of 
them. I was so often reproached and teased for being 
little that it gave me great satisfaction to beat a five- 
foot boy to the goal. 

Once a great, hulky colored boy, who was the tor- 
ment of the neighborhood, treated me roughly while 
I was playing on the street. My father, determined 
to teach the rascal a lesson for once, had him arrested 
and brought to court. The boy was locked up over- 
night, and he emerged from his brief imprisonment 
with a respect for the rights and persons of his neigh- 
bors. But the moral of this incident lies not herein. 
What interested me more than my revenge on a bully 
was what I saw of the way in which justice was actually 
administered in the United States. Here we were gath- 
ered in the little courtroom, bearded Arlington Street 
against wool-headed Arlington Street; accused and 
accuser, witnesses, sympathizers, sight-seers, and all. 
Nobody cringed, nobody was bullied, nobody lied who 
did n't want to. We were all free, and all treated 
equally, just as it said in the Constitution ! The evil- 
doer was actually punished, and not the victim, as 
might very easily happen in a similar case in Russia. 



74 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

" Liberty and justice for all." Three cheers for the 
Bed, White, and Blue! 

There was one occasion in the week when I was ever 
willing to put away my book, no matter how entranc- 
ing were its pages. That was on Saturday night, when 
Bessie Finklestein called for me ; and Bessie and I, with 
arms entwined, called for Sadie Rabinowitch; and 
Bessie and Sadie and I, still further entwined, called 
for Annie Reilly; and Bessie, etc., etc., inextricably 
wound up, marched up Broadway, and took possession 
of all we saw, heard, guessed, or desired, from end to 
end of that main thoroughfare of Chelsea. 

Parading all abreast, as many as we were, only 
breaking ranks to let people pass ; leaving the imprints 
of our noses and fingers on plate-glass windows ablaze 
with electric lights and alluring with display ; inspect- 
ing tons of cheap candy, to find a few pennies' worth 
of the most enduring kind, the same to be sucked and 
chewed by the company, turn and turn about, as we 
continued our promenade ; loitering wherever a crowd 
gathered, or running for a block or so to cheer on the 
fire-engine or police ambulance; getting into every- 
body's way, and just keeping clear of serious mischief, 
— we were only girls, — we enjoyed ourselves as only 
children can whose fathers keep a basement grocery 
store, whose mothers do their own washing, and whose 
sisters operate a machine for five dollars a week. 

So went the life in Chelsea for the space of a year 
or so. Then my father, finding a discrepancy between 
his assets and liabilities on the wrong side of the ledger, 
once more struck tent, collected his flock, and set out 
in search of richer pastures. 

There was a charming simplicity about these pro- 
ceedings. Here to-day, apparently rooted; there to- 
morrow, and just as much at home. Another basement 



A NUMBER OF THINGS 75 

grocery, with a freshly painted sign over the door; 
the broom in the corner, the loaf on the table — these 
things made home for us. There were rather more 
Negroes on Wheeler Street, in the lower South End 
of Boston, than there had been on Arlington Street, 
which promised more numerous outstanding accounts ; 
but they were a neighborly folk, and they took us stran- 
gers in — sometimes very badly. Then there was the 
school three blocks away, where " America " was sung 
to the same tune as in Chelsea, and geography was 
made as dark a mystery. It was impossible not to feel 
at home. 

And presently, lest anything be lacking to our do- 
mestic bliss, there was a new baby in a borrowed crib ; 
and little Dora had only a few more turns to take 
with her battered doll carriage before a life-size vehicle 
with a more animated dolly was turned over to her 
constant care. 

The Wheeler Street neighborhood is not a place 
where careful parents would choose to bring up their 
children, if pleasanter localities were within their 
reach. But I found no fault with Wheeler Street when 
I was fourteen years old. On the contrary, I pro- 
nounced it good. We had never lived so near the car 
tracks before, and I delighted in the moonlike splen- 
dor of the arc lamp just in front of the saloon. The 
space illumined by this lamp and enlivened by the 
passage of many people was the favorite playground 
for Wheeler Street youth. On our street there was 
not room to turn around; here the sidewalk spread 
out wider as it swung around to Shawmut Avenue. 

I played with the boys by preference, as in Chelsea. 
Whatever pranks the boys proposed, they found me 
game ; and they proposed a great many things, and 
play hours were never long enough. 

And there was Morgan Chapel. It was worth com- 



76 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

ing to Wheeler Street just for that. All the children 
of the neighborhood, except the most rowdyish, flocked 
to Morgan Chapel at least once a week. This was on 
Saturday evening, when a free entertainment was 
given, consisting of music, recitations, and other parlor 
accomplishments. The performances were exceedingly 
artistic, according to the impartial judgment of juve- 
nile Wheeler Street. I can speak with authority for 
the crowd of us from Number 11. We hung upon the 
lips of the beautiful ladies who read or sang to us; 
and they in turn did their best, recognizing the quality 
of our approval. We admired the miraculously clean 
gentlemen who sang or played, as heartily as we ap- 
plauded their performance. Sometimes the beautiful 
ladies were accompanied by ravishing little girls who 
stood up in a glory of golden curls, frilled petticoats, 
and silk stockings, to recite pathetic or comic pieces, 
with trained expression and practised gestures that 
seemed to us the perfection of the elocutionary art. 
We were all a little bit stage-struck after these enter- 
tainments; but what was more, we were genuinely 
moved by the glimpses of a fairer world than ours 
which we caught through the music and poetry ; the 
world in which the beautiful ladies dwelt with the 
fairy children and the clean gentlemen. 

Morgan Chapel was not the only institution in the 
neighborhood that offered amusement and inspiration 
to the people of the crowded tenements. There were 
the missions, the libraries, the neighborhood centres, 
where clubs and classes invited us to do all sorts of 
delightful things for which our homes afforded no 
resources. My brother, my sister Dora, and I were 
introduced to some of the clubs by our young neigh- 
bors, and we were glad to go. For our home gave us 
little besides meals in the kitchen and beds in the 
dark. What with the six of us, and the store, and 



A NUMBER OF THINGS 77 

the baby, and sometimes a " greener " or two from 
Polotzk, whom we lodged as a matter of course till 
they found a permanent home — what with such a com- 
pany and the size of our tenement, we needed to get out 
almost as much as our neighbors' children. I say al- 
most ; for our parlor we managed to keep pretty clear, 
and the lamp on our centre table was always in order, 
and its light fell often on an open book. Still, it was 
part of the life of Wheeler Street to belong to clubs, 
so we belonged. 

I did n't care for sewing or cooking, so I joined a 
dancing-club ; and even here I was a failure. I had 
been a very good dancer in Russia, but here I 
found all the steps different, and I did not have the 
courage to go out in the middle of the slippery floor 
and mince it and toe it in front of the teacher. When 
I retired to a corner and tried to play dominoes, I be- 
came suddenly shy of my partner ; and I never could 
win a game of checkers, although formerly I used to 
beat my father at it. I tried to be friends with a little 
girl I had known in Chelsea, but she met my advances 
coldly. She lived on Appleton Street, which was too 
aristocratic to mix with Wheeler Street. Geraldine 
was studying elocution, and she wore a scarlet cape 
and hood, and she was going on the stage by and by, 
I acknowledged that her sense of superiority was well- 
founded, and retired farther into my corner, for the 
first time conscious of my shabbiness and lowliness. 

I looked on at the dancing until I could endure it 
no longer. Overcome by a sense of isolation and un- 
fitness, I slipped out of the room, avoiding the teach- 
er's eye, and went home to write melancholy poetry. 

I shall never forget the pattern of the red carpet in 
our parlor, — we had achieved a carpet since Chelsea 
days, — because I lay for hours face down on the floor, 
writing poetry on a screechy slate. When I had per- 



78 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

fected my verses, and copied them fair on the famous 
blue-lined note paper, and saw that I had made a very 
pathetic poem indeed, I felt better. And this happened 
over and over again. I gave up the dancing-club, I 
ceased to know the rowdy little boys, and I wrote 
melancholy poetry of tener, and felt better. The centre 
table became my study. I read much, and mooned 
between chapters, and wrote long letters to Miss Dil- 
lingham. 



CHAPTER XI 

TARNISHED LAURELS 

Through all these small adventures on Wheeler 
Street I was slowly growing up, but for many a day 
more I was still a little girl. As a little girl, in many 
ways immature for my age, I finished my course in 
the grammar school, and was graduated with honors, 
four years after my landing in Boston. 

Wheeler Street recognizes five great events in a 
girl's life : namely, christening, confirmation, gradua- 
tion, marriage, and burial. These occasions all require 
full dress for the heroine, and full dress is forthcom- 
ing, no matter if the family goes into debt for it. 
There was not a girl who came to school in rags all 
the year round that did not burst forth in sudden 
glory on Graduation Day. Fine muslin frocks, lace- 
trimmed petticoats, patent-leather shoes, perishable 
hats, gloves, parasols, fans — every girl had them. A 
mother who had scrubbed floors for years to keep her 
girl in school was not going to have her shamed in the 
end for want of a pretty dress. So she cut off the 
children's supply of butter and worked nights and 
borrowed and fell into arrears with the rent ; and on 
Graduation Day she felt magnificently rewarded, see- 
ing her Mamie as fine as any girl in the school. And 
in order to preserve for posterity this triumphant 
spectacle, she took Mamie, after the exercises, to be 
photographed, with her diploma in one hand, a bou- 
quet in the other, and the gloves, fan, parasol, and 
patent-leather shoes in full sight around a fancy 
table. 



80 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

Poor as we were, it did not strike me as folly, but 
as the fulfilment of the portent of my natal star, when 
I saw myself, on Graduation Day, arrayed like unto 
a princess. Frills, lace, patent-leather shoes — I had 
everything. I even had a sash with silk fringes. 

Before we had been two years in America, my sis- 
ter Frieda was engaged to be married. This was under 
the old dispensation : Frieda came to America too late 
to avail herself of the gifts of an American girlhood. 
My father was too recently from the Old World to 
be entirely free from the influence of its social tradi- 
tions. He had put Frieda to work out of necessity. 
The necessity was hardly lifted when she had an offer 
of marriage, but my father would not stand in the 
way of what he considered her welfare. Let her escape 
from the workshop, if she had a chance, while the 
roses were still in her cheeks. If she remained for ten 
years more bent over the needle, what would she gain? 
Not even her personal comfort ; for Frieda never called 
her earnings her own, but spent everything on the 
family, denying herself all but necessities. The young 
man who sued for her was a good workman, earning 
fair wages, of irreproachable character, and refined 
manners. My father had known him for years. 

My sister's engagement pleased me very well. Our 
confidences were not interrupted, and I understood 
that she was happy. I was very fond of Moses Rif kin 
myself. He was the nicest young man of my acquaint- 
ance, not at all like other workmen. He was very kind 
to us children, bringing us presents and taking us out 
for excursions. He had a sense of humor, and he was 
going to marry our Frieda. How could I help being 
pleased ? 

The marriage was not to take place for some time, 
and in the interval Frieda remained in the shop. She 
continued to bring home all her wages. If she was 



TARNISHED LAURELS 81 

■going to desert the family, she would not let them 
|feel it sooner than she must. 

Then all of a sudden she turned spendthrift. She 
[appropriated I do not know what fabulous sums, to 
[spend just as she pleased, for once. She attended bar- 
Jgain sales, and brought away such finery as had never 
■ graced our flat before. Home from work in the eve- 
1 ning, after a hurried supper, she shut herself up in the 
parlor, and cut and snipped and measured and basted 
and stitched as if there were nothing else in the world 
to do. It was early summer, and the air had a wooing 
touch, even on Wheeler Street. Moses Rifkin came, 
and I suppose he also had a wooing touch. But Frieda 
only smiled and shook her head ; and as her mouth 
was full of pins, it was physically impossible for Moses 
to argue. She remained all evening in a white dis- 
order of tucked breadths, curled ruffles, dismembered 
sleeves, and swirls of fresh lace ; her needle glanc- 
ing in the lamplight, and poor Moses picking up her 
spools. 

Her trousseau, was it not ? No, not her trousseau. 
It was my graduation dress on which she was so in- 
tent. And when it was finished, and was pronounced 
a most beautiful dress, and she ought to have been 
satisfied, Frieda went to the shops once more and 
bought the sash with the silk fringes. 

Graduation Day was nothing less than a triumph 
for me. It was not only that I had two pieces to 
speak, one of them an original composition ; it was 
more because I was known in my school district as 
the "smartest" girl in the class, and all eyes were 
turned on the prodigy, and I was aware of it. I was 
aware of everything. That is why I am able to tell 
you everything now. 

The assembly hall was crowded to bursting, but 
my friends had no trouble in finding seats. They were 



82 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

ushered up to the platform, which was reserved for 
guests of honor. I was very proud to see my friends 
treated with such distinction. My parents were there, 
and Frieda, of course ; Miss Dillingham, and some 
others of my Chelsea teachers. A dozen or so of my 
humbler friends and acquaintances were scattered 
among the crowd on the floor. 

When I stepped up on the stage to read my com- 
position I was seized with stage fright. The floor 
under my feet and the air around me were oppres- 
sively present to my senses, while my own hand I 
could not have located. I did not know where my 
body began or ended, I was so conscious of my gloves, 
my shoes, my flowing sash. My wonderful dress, in 
which I had taken so much satisfaction, gave me the 
most trouble. I was suddenly paralyzed by a convic- 
tion that it was too short, and it seemed to me I stood 
on absurdly long legs. And ten thousand people were 
looking up at me. It was horrible ! 

I suppose I no more than cleared my throat before 
I began to read, but to me it seemed that I stood pet- 
rified for an age, an awful silence booming in my ears. 
My voice, when at last I began, sounded far away. I 
thought that nobody could hear me. But I kept on, 
mechanically ; for I had rehearsed many times. And 
as I read I gradually forgot myself, forgot the place 
and the occasion. The people looking up at me heard 
the story of a beautiful little boy, my cousin, whom I 
had loved very dearly, and who died in far-distant 
Russia some years after I came to America. My com- 
position was not a masterpiece ; it was merely good 
for a girl of fifteen. But I had written that I still 
loved the little cousin, and I made a thousand strangers 
feel it. And before the applause there was a moment 
of stillness in the great hall. 

After the singing and reading by the class, there 



TARNISHED LAURELS 83 

were the customary addresses by distinguished guests. 
We girls were reminded that we were going to be 
women, and happiness was promised to those of us who 
would aim to be noble women. A great many trite 
and obvious things, a great deal of the rhetoric appro- 
priate to the occasion, compliments, applause, general 
satisfaction ; so went the programme. Much of the 
rhetoric, many of the fine sentiments did not pene- 
trate to the thoughts of us for whom they were in- 
tended, because we were in such a flutter about our 
ruffles and ribbons, and could hardly refrain from 
openly prinking. But we applauded very heartily every 
speaker and every would-be speaker, understanding 
that by a consensus of opinion on the platform we 
were very fine young ladies, and much was to be ex- 
pected of us. 

One of the last speakers was introduced as a mem- 
ber of the School Board. He began like all the rest of 
them, but he ended differently. Abandoning generali- 
ties, he went on to tell the story of a particular school- 
girl, a pupil in a Boston school, whose phenomenal 
career might serve as an illustration of what the 
American system of free education and the European 
immigrant could make of each other. He had not got 
very far when I realized, to my great surprise and no 
small delight, that he was telling my story. I saw my 
friends on the platform beaming behind the speaker, 
and I heard my name whispered in the audience. I 
had been so much of a celebrity, in a small local way, 
that identification of the speaker's heroine was inevi- 
table. My classmates, of course, guessed the name, and 
they turned to look at me, and nudged me, and all but 
pointed at me; their new muslins rustling and silk 
ribbons hissing. 

One or two nearest me forgot etiquette so far as to 
whisper to me. " Mary Antin," they said, as the speaker 



84 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

sat down, amid a burst of the most enthusiastic ap- 
plause, — " Mary Antin, why don't you get up and 
thank him?" 

I was dazed with all that had happened. Bursting 
with pride I was, but I was moved, too, by nobler 
feelings. I realized, in a vague, far-off way, what it 
meant to my father and mother to be sitting there 
and seeing me held up as a paragon, my history made 
the theme of an eloquent discourse ; what it meant 
to my father to see his ambitious hopes thus glori- 
ously fulfilled, his judgment of me verified ; what it 
meant to Frieda to hear me all but named with such 
honor. With all these things choking my heart to 
overflowing, my wits forsook me, if I had had any at 
all that day. The audience was stirring and whispering 
so that I could hear: "Who is it?" " Is that so?" 
And again they prompted me : — 

"Mary Antin, get up. Get up and thank him, 
Mary." 

And I rose where I sat, and in a voice that sounded 
thin as a fly's after the oratorical bass of the last 
speaker, I began : — 

" I want to thank you — " 

That is as far as I got. Mr. Swan, the principal, 
waved his hand to silence me ; and then, and only 
then, did I realize the enormity of what I had done. 

My eulogist had had the good taste not to mention 
names, and I had been brazenly forward, deliberately 
calling attention to myself when there was no need. Oh, 
it was sickening ! I hated myself, I hated with all my 
heart the girls who had prompted me to such immodest 
conduct. I wished the ground would yawn and snap 
me up. I was ashamed to look up at my friends on 
the platform. What was Miss Dillingham thinking 
of me ? Oh, what a fool I had been ! I had ruined my 
own triumph. I had disgraced myself, and my friends, 



TARNISHED LAURELS 85 

and poor Mr. Swan, and the Winthrop School. The 
monster vanity had sucked out my wits, and left me a 
staring idiot. 

It is easy to say that I was making a mountain out 
of a mole hill, a catastrophe out of a mere breach of 
good manners. It is easy to say that. But I know 
that I suffered agonies of shame. After the exercises, 
when the crowd pressed in all directions in search of 
friends, I tried in vain to get out of the hall. I was 
mobbed, I was lionized. Everybody wanted to shake 
hands with the prodigy of the day, and they knew 
who it was. I had made sure of that ; I had exhibited 
myself. The people smiled on me, flattered me, passed 
me on from one to another. I smirked back, but I did 
not know what I said. I was wild to be clear of the 
building. I thought everybody mocked me. All my 
roses had turned to ashes, and all through my own 
brazen conduct. 

I would have given my diploma to have Miss Dil- 
lingham know how the thing had happened, but I 
could not bring myself to speak first. If she would 
ask me — But nobody asked. Nobody looked away 
from me. Everybody congratulated me, and my fa- 
ther and mother and my remotest relations. But the 
sting of shame smarted just the same ; I could not 
be consoled. I had made a fool of myself: Mr. Swan 
had publicly put me down. 

Ah, so that was it ! Vanity was the vital spot again. 
It was wounded vanity that writhed and squirmed. It 
was not because I had been bold, but because I had 
been pronounced bold, that I suffered so monstrously. 
If Mr. Swan, with an eloquent gesture, had not si- 
lenced me, I might have made my little speech — 
good heavens ! what did I mean to say ? — and prob- 
ably called it another feather in my bonnet. But he 
had stopped me promptly, disgusted with my forward- 



86 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

ness, and he had shown before all those hundreds 
what he thought of me. Therein lay the sting. 

With all my talent for self-analysis, it took me a 
long time to realize the essential pettiness of my trou- 
ble. For years — actually for years — after that event- 
ful day of mingled triumph and disgrace, I could not 
think of the unhappy incident without inward squirm- 
ing. I remember distinctly how the little scene would 
suddenly flash upon me at night, as I lay awake in 
bed, and I would turn over impatiently, as if to shake 
off a nightmare ; and this so long after the occur- 
rence that I was myself amazed at the persistence of 
the nightmare. I had never been reproached by any 
one for my conduct on Graduation Day. Why could 
I not forgive myself ? I studied the matter deeply — 
it wearies me to remember how deeply — till at last 
I understood that it was wounded vanity that hurt so, 
and no nobler remorse. Then, and only then, was the 
ghost laid. If it ever tried to get up again, after that, 
I only had to call it names to see it scurry back to its 
grave and pull the sod down after it. 



CHAPTER XII 

DOVER STREET 

What happened next was Dover Street. 

And what was Dover Street? 

Outwardly, Dover Street is a noisy thoroughfare 
cut through a South End slum, in every essential the 
same as Wheeler Street. It is intersected, near its 
eastern end, where we lived, by Harrison Avenue. 
That street is to the South End what Salem Street is 
to the North End. It is the heart of the South End 
ghetto, for the greater part of its length ; although its 
northern end belongs to the realm of Chinatown. Its 
multifarious business bursts through the narrow shop 
doors, and overruns the basements, the sidewalk, the 
street itself, in pushcarts and open-air stands. Its 
multitudinous population bursts through the greasy 
tenement doors, and floods the corridors, the door- 
steps, the gutters, the side streets, pushing in and out 
among the pushcarts, all day long and half the night 
besides. 

We had no particular reason for coming to Dover 
Street. It might just as well have been Applepie 
Alley. For my father had sold, with the goods, fix- 
tures, and good-will of the Wheeler Street store, all 
his hopes of ever making a living in the grocery trade; 
and I doubt if he got a silver dollar the more for them. 
We had to live somewhere, even if we were not mak- 
ing a living, so we came to Dover Street, where tene- 
ments were cheap. 

Our new home consisted of five small rooms up two 
flights of stairs, with the right of way through the 



88 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

dark corridors. In the " parlor " the dingy paper hung 
in rags and the plaster fell in chunks. One of the bed- 
rooms was absolutely dark and air-tight. The kitchen 
windows looked out on a dirty court, at the back of 
which was the rear tenement of the estate. To us be- 
longed, along with the five rooms and the right of way 
aforesaid, a block of upper space the length of a pul- 
ley line across this court, and the width of an arc 
described by a windy Monday's wash in its remotest 
wanderings. 

The little front bedroom was assigned to me, with 
only one partner, my sister Dora. A mouse could not 
have led a cat much of a chase across this room; still 
we found space for a narrow bed, a crazy bureau, and 
a small table. From the window there was an unob- 
structed view of a lumberyard, beyond which frowned 
the blackened walls of a factory. The fence of the 
lumberyard was gay with theatre posters and illus- 
trated advertisements of tobacco, whiskey, and patent 
baby foods. When the window was open, there was a 
constant clang and whirr of electric cars, varied by 
the screech of machinery, the clatter of empty wagons, 
or the rumble of heavy trucks. 

There was nothing worse in all this than we had 
had before since our exile from Crescent Beach; but 
I did not take the same delight in the propinquity of 
electric cars and arc lights that I had till now. I sup- 
pose the tenement began to pall on me. 

It must not be supposed that I enjoyed any degree 
of privacy because I had half a room to myself. We 
were six in the five rooms ; we were bound to be al- 
ways in each other's way. And as it was within our 
flat, so it was in the house as a whole. All doors, be- 
ginning with the street door, stood open most of the 
time ; or if they were closed, the tenants did not wear 
out their knuckles knocking for admittance. I could 



DOVER STREET 89 

stand at any time in the unswept entrance hall and 
tell, from an analysis of the medley of sounds and 
smells that issued from doors ajar, what was going on 
in the several flats above and below. Sounds of scold- 
ings, spankings, and quarrellings, smells of neglected 
babies and greasy cooking — the thick air was clam- 
orous with advertisements of the wretchedness of fam- 
ily life in the tenements. 

To escape from these various horrors I ascend to 
the roof, where bacon and babies and child-beating 
are not. But there I find two figures in calico wrap- 
pers, with bare red arms akimbo, a basket of wet 
clothes in front of each, and only one empty clothes- 
line between them. I do not want to be dragged in 
as a witness in a case of assault and battery, so I de- 
scend to the street again. 

In front of the door I squeeze through a group of 
children. They are going to play tag, and are count- 
ing to see who should be " it " : — 

" My-mother-and-your-mother-went-out-to-hang-clothes ; 
My-mother-gave-your-mother-a-puuch-in-the-nose." 

If the children's couplet does not give a vivid pic- 
ture of the life, manners, and customs of Dover Street, 
no description of mine can ever do so. 

Frieda was married before we came to Dover Street, 
and went to live in East Boston. This left me the 
eldest of the children at home. Whether on this ac- 
count, or because I was outgrowing my childish care- 
lessness, or because I began to believe, on the cumu- 
lative evidence of the Crescent Beach, Chelsea, and 
Wheeler Street adventures, that America, after all, 
was not going to provide for my father's family, — 
whether for any or all of these reasons, I began at 
this time to take bread-and-butter matters more to 
heart, and to ponder ways and means of getting rich. 
My father sought employment wherever work was 



90 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

going on. His health was poor; he aged very fast. 
Nevertheless he offered himself for every kind of 
labor; he offered himself for a boy's wages. Here he 
was found too weak, here too old ; here his imperfect 
English was in the way, here his Jewish appearance. 
He had a few short terms of work at this or that ; I 
do not know the name of the form of drudgery that 
my father did not practise. But all told, he did not 
earn enough to pay the rent in full and buy a bone 
for the soup. The only steady source of income, for 
I do not know what years, was my brother's earnings 
from his newspapers. 

Surely this was the time for me to take my sister's 
place in the workshop. I had had every fair chance 
until now : school, my time to myself, liberty to run 
and play and make friends. I had graduated from 
grammar school ; I was of legal age to go to work. 
What was I doing, sitting at home and dreaming? 

I was minding my business, of course ; with all my 
might I was minding my business. As I understood 
it, my business was to go to school, to learn every- 
thing there was to know, to write poetry, become 
famous, and make the family rich. Surely it was not 
shirking to lay out such a programme for myself. I 
had boundless faith in my future. I was certainly 
going to be a ^great poet ; I was certainly going to 
take care of the family. 

Thus mused I, in my arrogance. And my family ? 
They were as bad as I. My father had not lost a whit 
of his ambition for me. Since Graduation Day, and 
the school-committeeman's speech, and half a column 
about me in the paper, his ambition had soared even 
higher. He was going to keep me at school till I was 
prepared for college. By that time, he was sure, I 
would more than take care of myself. It never for a 
moment entered his head to doubt the wisdom or jus- 



DOVER STREET 91 

tice of this course. And my mother was just as loyal 
to my cause, and my brother, and my sister. 

It is no wonder if I got along rapidly : I was 
helped, encouraged, and upheld by every one. Even 
the baby cheered me on. When I asked her whether 
she believed in higher education, she answered, 
without a moment's hesitation, " Ducka-ducka-da ! " 
Against her I remember only that one day, when I 
read her a verse out of a most pathetic piece I was 
composing, she laughed right out, a most disrespect- 
ful laugh ; for which I revenged myself by washing 
her face at the faucet, and rubbing it red on the roller 
towel. 

It was just like me, when it was debated whether 1 
would be best fitted for college at the High or the 
Latin School, to go in person to Mr. Tetlow, who was 
principal of both schools, and so get the most expert 
opinion on the subject. I never send a messenger, 
you may remember, where I can go myself. It was 
vacation time, and I had to find Mr. Tetlow at his 
home. Away out to the wilds of Roxbury I found my 
way — perhaps half an hour's ride on the electric car 
from Dover Street. I grew an inch taller and broader 
between the corner of Cedar Street and Mr. Tetlow's 
house, such was the charm of the clean, green suburb 
on a cramped waif from the slums. My faded calico 
dress, my rusty straw sailor hat, the color of my skin 
and all bespoke the waif. But never a bit daunted 
was I. I went up the steps to the porch, rang the 
bell, and asked for the great man with as much as- 
surance as if I were a daily visitor on Cedar Street. 
I calmly awaited the appearance of Mr. Tetlow in 
the reception room, and stated my errand without 
trepidation. 

And why not ? I was a solemn little person for the 
moment, earnestly seeking advice on a matter of 



92 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

great importance. That is what Mr. Tetlow saw, to 
judge by the gravity with which he discussed my 
business with me, and the courtesy with which he 
showed me to the door. He saw, too, I fancy, that I 
was not the least bit conscious of my shabby dress ; 
and I am sure he did not smile at my appearance, 
even when my back was turned. 

A new life began for me when I entered the Latin 
School in September. Until then I had gone to school 
with my equals, and as a matter of course. Now it 
was distinctly a feat for me to keep in school, and 
my schoolmates were socially so far superior to me 
that my poverty became conspicuous. The pupils of 
the Latin School, from the nature of the institution, 
are an aristocratic set. They come from refined homes, 
dress well, and spend the recess hour talking about 
parties, beaux, and the matinee. As students they are 
either very quick or very hard-working; for the course 
of study, in the lingo of the school world, is con- 
sidered " stiff." The girl with half her brain asleep, 
or with too many beaux, drops out by the end of the 
first year ; or a one and only beau may be the fatal 
element. At the end of the course the weeding proc- 
ess has reduced the once numerous tribe of academic 
candidates to a cosey little family. 

By all these tokens I should have had serious busi- 
ness on my hands as a pupil in the Latin School, but 
I did not find it hard. To make myself letter-perfect 
in my lessons required long hours of study, but that 
was my delight. To make myself at home in an alien 
world was also within my talents ; I had been practis- 
ing it day and night for the past four years. To 
remain unconscious of my shabby and ill-fitting 
clothes when the rustle of silk petticoats in the school- 
room protested against them was a matter still within 
my moral reach. Half a dress a year had been my al- 



DOVER STREET 93 

lowance for many seasons ; even less, for as I did not 
grow much I could wear my dresses as long as they 
lasted. And I had stood before editors, and exchanged 
polite calls with school-teachers, untroubled by the 
detestable colors and archaic design of my garments. 
To stand up and recite Latin declensions without 
trembling from hunger was something more of a feat, 
because I sometimes went to school with little or no 
breakfast ; but even that required no special heroism, 
— at most it was a matter of self-control. I had the 
advantage of a poor appetite, too ; I really did not 
need much breakfast. Or if I was hungry it would 
hardly show ; I coughed so much that my unsteadi- 
ness was self-explained. 

I was not unhappy on Dover Street ; quite the con- 
trary. Everything of consequence was well with me. 
Poverty was a superficial temporary matter ; it van- 
ished at the touch of money. Money in America was 
plentiful ; it was only a matter of getting some of it* 
and I was on my way to the mint. If Dover Street 
was not a pleasant place to abide in, it was only a 
wayside house. And I was really happy, actively 
happy, in the exercise of my mind in Latin, mathe- 
matics, history, and the rest ; the things that suffice a 
studious girl in the middle teens. 

Still I had moments of depression, when my whole 
being protested against the life of the slum. All sorts 
of vulgar things forced themselves on my notice. 
Then it was I took to running away from home. I 
went out in the twilight and walked for hours, my 
blind feet leading me. I did not care where I went. 
If I lost my way, so much the better ; I never wanted 
to see Dover Street again. 

But behold, as I left the crowds behind, and the 
broader avenues were spanned by the open sky, my 
grievances melted away, and I fell to dreaming of 



94 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

things that neither hurt nor pleased. A fringe of trees 
against the sunset became suddenly the symbol of the 
whole world, and I stood and gazed and asked ques- 
tions of it. The sunset faded; the trees withdrew. The 
wind went by, but dropped no hint in my ear. The 
evening star leaped out between the clouds, and sealed 
the secret with a seal of splendor. 

A favorite resort of mine, after dark, was the South 
Boston Bridge, across South Bay and the Old Colony 
Railroad. This was so near home that I could go there 
at any time when the confusion in the house drove me 
out, or I felt the need of fresh air. I liked to stand 
leaning on the bridge railing, and look down on the 
dim tangle of railroad tracks below. I could barely see 
them branching out, elbowing, winding, and sliding 
out into the night in pairs. I was fascinated by the 
dotted lights, the significant red and green of signal 
lamps. These simple things stood for a complexity 
that it made me dizzy to think of. Then the blackness 
below me was split by the fiery eye of a monster en- 
gine, his breath enveloped me in blinding clouds, his 
long body shot by, rattling a hundred claws of steel ; 
and he was gone, with an imperative shriek that shook 
me where I stood. 

So would I be, swift on my rightful business, pick- 
ing out my proper track from the million that cross 
it, pausing for no obstacles, sure of my goal. 



CHAPTER XIII 

A KINGDOM IN THE SLUMS 

Dover Street was never really my residence — at 
least, not the whole of it. It happened to be the nook 
where my bed was made, but I inhabited the City of 
Boston. In the pearl-misty morning, in the ruby-red 
evening, I was empress of all I surveyed from the roof 
of the tenement house. I could point in any direction 
and name a friend who would welcome me there. Off 
towards the northwest, in the direction of Harvard 
Bridge, which some day I should cross on my way 
to Radcliffe College, was one of my favorite palaces, 
whither I resorted every day after school. 

A low, wide-spreading building with a dignified 
granite front it was, flanked on all sides by noble old 
churches, museums, and school-houses, harmoniously 
disposed around a spacious triangle, called Copley 
Square. Two thoroughfares that came straight from 
the green suburbs swept by my palace, one on either 
side, converged at the apex of the triangle, and pointed 
off, past the Public Garden, across the historic Com- 
mon, to the domed State House sitting on a height. 

It was my habit to go very slowly up the low, broad 
steps to the palace entrance, pleasing my eyes with 
the majestic lines of the building, and lingering to read 
again the carved inscriptions : Public Library — 
Built by the People — Free to AIL 

Did I not say it was my palace ? Mine, because I 
was a citizen ; mine, though I was born an alien ; mine, 
though I lived on Dover Street. My palace — mine ! 

I loved to lean against a pillar in the entrance hall, 



96 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

watching the people go in and out. Groups of children 
hushed their chatter at the entrance, and skipped, 
whispering and giggling in their fists, up the grand 
stairway, patting the great stone lions at the top, with 
an eye on the aged policemen down below. Spectacled 
scholars came slowly down the stairs, loaded with 
books, heedless of the lofty arches that echoed their 
steps. Visitors from out of town lingered long in the 
entrance hall, studying the inscriptions and symbols 
on the marble floor. And I loved to stand in the midst 
of all this, and remind myself that I was there, that I 
had a right to be there, that I was at home there. All 
these eager children, all these fine-browed women, all 
these scholars going home to write learned books — 
I and they had this glorious thing in common, this 
noble treasure house of learning. It was wonderful to 
say, This is mine; it was thrilling to say, This is ours. 

I visited every part of the building that was open 
to the public. I spent rapt hours studying the Abbey 
pictures. I repeated to myself lines from Tennyson's 
poem before the glowing scenes of the Holy Grail. 
Before the " Prophets " in the gallery above I was 
mute, but echoes of the Hebrew Psalms I had long 
forgotten throbbed somewhere in the depths of my 
consciousness. The Chavannes series around the main 
staircase I did not enjoy for years. I thought the 
pictures looked faded, and their symbolism somehow 
failed to move me at first. 

Bates Hall was the place where I spent my longest 
hours in the library. I chose a seat far at one end, so 
that looking up from my books I would get the full 
effect of the vast reading-room. I felt the grand spaces 
under the soaring arches as a personal attribute of my 
being. 

The courtyard was my sky-roofed chamber of 
dreams. Slowly strolling past the endless pillars of 



A KINGDOM IN THE SLUMS 97 

the colonnade, the fountain murmured in my ear of all 
the beautiful things in all the beautiful world. I im- 
agined that I was a Greek of the classic days, tread- 
ing on sandalled feet through the glistening marble 
porticoes of Athens. I expected to see, if I looked 
over my shoulder, a bearded philosopher in a droop- 
ing mantle, surrounded by beautiful youths with 
wreathed locks. Everything I read in school, in Latin 
or Greek, everything in my history books, was real to 
me here, in this courtyard set about with stately 
columns. 

Here is where I liked to remind myself of Polotzk, 
the better to bring out the wonder of my life.. That I 
who was born in the prison of the Pale 1 should roam 
at will in the land of freedom was a marvel that it did 
me good to realize. That I who was brought up to 
my teens almost without a book should be set down 
in the midst of all the books that ever were written 
was a miracle as great as any on record. That an out- 
cast should become a privileged citizen, that a beggar 
should dwell in a palace — this was a romance more 
thrilling than poet ever sung. Surely I was rocked 
in an enchanted cradle. 

From the Public Library to the State House is only 
a step, and I found my way there without a guide. 
The State House was one of the places I could point 
to and say that I had a friend there to welcome me. 
I do not mean the representative of my district^ 
though I hope he was a worthy man. My friend was 
no less a man than the Honorable Senator Roe, from 
Worcester, whose letters to me, written under the 
embossed letter head of the Senate Chamber, I could 
not help exhibiting to my school friends. 

1 The Pale of Settlement : In Russia, the Jews are legally restricted 
as to residence to a number of specified provinces, comprising not 
more than a two-thousandth fraction of the Russian territory, although 
the Jews constitute one twenty-fourth of the population. 



98 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

How did I come by a Senator ? Through being a 
citizen of Boston, of course. To be a citizen of the 
smallest village in the United States which maintains 
a free school and a public library is to stand in the 
path of the splendid processions of opportunity. And 
as Boston has rather better schools and a rather finer 
library than some other villages, it comes natural 
there for children in the slums to summon gentlemen 
from the State House to be their personal friends. 

It is so simple, in Boston ! You are a school-girl, 
and your teacher gives you a ticket for the annual 
historical lecture in the Old South Church, on Wash- 
ington's Birthday. You hear a stirring discourse on 
some subject in your country's history, and you go 
home with a heart bursting with patriotism. You sit 
down and write a letter to the speaker who so moved 
you, telling him how glad you are to be an American, 
explaining to him, if you happen to be a recently 
made American, why you love your adopted country 
so much better than your native land. Perhaps the 
patriotic lecturer happens to be a Senator, and he 
reads your letter under the vast dome of the State 
House ; and it occurs to him that he and his eminent 
colleagues and the stately capitol and the glorious 
flag that floats above it, all gathered on the hill above 
the Common, do his country no greater honor than 
the outspoken admiration of an ardent young alien. 
The Senator replies to your letter, inviting you to 
visit him at the State House ; and in the renowned 
chamber where the august business of the State is 
conducted, you, an obscure child from the slums, and 
he, a chosen leader of the people, seal a democratic 
friendship based on the love of a common flag. 

Even simpler than to meet a Senator was it to be- 
come acquainted with a man like Edward Everett Hale. 
" The Grand Old Man of Boston," the people called 



A KINGDOM IN THE SLUMS 99 

him, from the manner of his life among them. He 
kept open house in every public building in the city. 
Wherever two citizens met to devise a measure for the 
public weal, he was a third. Wherever a worthy cause 
needed a champion, Dr. Hale lifted his mighty voice. 
At some time or another his colossal figure towered 
above an eager multitude from every pulpit in the city, 
from every lecture platform. And where is the map 
of Boston that gives the names of the lost alleys and 
backways where the great man went in search of the 
lame in body, wl^o could not join the public assembly, 
in quest of the maimed in spirit, who feared to show 
their faces in the open? If all the little children who 
have sat on Dr. Hale's knee were started in a proces- 
sion on the State House steps, standing four abreast, 
there would be a lane of merry faces across the Com- 
mon, out to the Public Library, over Harvard Bridge, 
and away beyond to remoter landmarks. 

That I met Dr. Hale is no wonder. It was as inevi- 
table as that I should be a year older every twelve 
month. He was a part of Boston, as the salt wave is a 
part of the sea. I can hardly say whether he came to 
me or I came to him. We met, and my adopted coun- 
try took me closer to her breast. 

A day or two after our first meeting I called on Dr. 
Hale, at his invitation. It was only eight o'clock in the 
morning, you may be sure, because he had risen early 
to attend to a hundred great affairs, and I had risen 
early so as to talk with a great man before I went to 
school. I think we liked each other a little the more for 
the fact that when so many people were still asleep, 
we were already busy in the interests of citizenship 
and friendship. We certainly liked each other. 

I am sure I did not stay more than fifteen minutes, 
and all that I recall of our conversation was that Dr. 
Hale asked me a great many questions about Russia, 



100 AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND 

in a manner that made me feel that I was an author- 
ity on the subject; and with his great hand in good- 
bye he gave me a bit of homely advice, namely, that I 
should never study before breakfast! 

That was all, but for the rest of the day I moved 
against a background of grandeur. There was a noble 
ring to Virgil that day that even my teacher's firm 
translation had never brought out before. Obscure 
points in the history lesson were clear to me alone, of 
the thirty girls in the class. And it happened that the 
tulips in Copley Square opened that day, and shone 
in the sun like lighted lamps. 

Any one could be happy a year on Dover Street, 
after spending half an hour on Highland Street. I 
enjoyed so many half-hours in the great man's house 
that I do not know how to convey the sense of my re- 
membered happiness. My friend used to keep me in 
conversation a few minutes, in the famous study that 
was fit to have been preserved as a shrine ; after which 
he sent me to roam about the house, and explore his 
library, and take away what books I pleased. Who 
would feel cramped in a tenement, with such royal 
privileges as these? 

Once I brought Dr. Hale a present, a copy of a 
story of mine that had been printed in a journal ; 
and from his manner of accepting it you might have 
thought that I was a princess dispensing gifts from a 
throne. I wish I had asked him, that last time I talked 
with him, how it was that he who was so modest made 
those who walked with him so great. 

Modest as the man was the house in which he 
lived. A gray old house of a style that New England 
no longer builds, with a pillared porch curtained by 
vines, set back in the yard behind the old trees. 
Whatever cherished flowers glowed in the garden be- 
hind the house, the common daisy was encouraged to 



A KINGDOM IN THE SLUMS 101 

bloom in front. And was there sun or snow on the 
ground, the most timid hand could open the gate, the 
most humble visitor was sure of a welcome. Out of 
that modest house the troubled came comforted, the 
fallen came uplifted, the noble came inspired. 

From my little room on Dover Street I reached out 
for the world, and the world came to me. Through 
books, through the conversation of noble men and 
women, through communion with the stars in the 
depth of night, I entered into every noble chamber 
of the palace of life. I employed no charm to win ad- 
mittance. The doors opened to me because I had a 
right to be within. My patent of nobility was the 
longing for the abundance of life with which I was 
endowed at birth ; and from the time I could toddle 
unaided I had been gathering into my hand every- 
thing that was fine in the world around me. Given 
health and standing-room, I should have worked out 
my salvation even on a desert island. Being set 
down in the garden of America, where opportunity 
waits on ambition, I was bound to make my days a 
triumphal march toward my goal. The most un- 
friendly witness of my life will not venture to deny 
that I have been successful. For aside from subordi- 
nate desires for greatness or wealth or specific achieve- 
ment, my chief ambition in life has been to live, and 
I have lived. A glowing life has been mine, and the 
fires that blazed highest in all my days were kindled 
on Dover Street. 



GLOSSARY 

KEY TO PRONUNCIATION 



a as in man 


u as in circus 


a " " far 


u " " mute 


e " " met 


u " " pull 


e " '* meet 


ai " " aisle 


e " long e in German Leder oi " " joint 


i "in pin 


ch " " German ach, Scotch loch 


1 " " file 


h " " " " " " 


o " " not 


j " " failure 


o " u note 


n " " canon 


5 " " German Konig 


zh " z in seizure 




Explanations 



The abbreviations Germ. (= German), Hebr. (= Hebrew), Buss. (= Russian), 
and Yid. (= Yiddish) indicate the origin of a word. Most of the names marked 
Yiddish are such in form only, the roots being for the most part Hebrew. 

Prop. n. = proper name. 

The ending ke of Yiddish proper names (Mashke, Fetchke) has a diminutive or 
endearing value, like the German chen (Helenchen). 

Double names are given under the first name. 

Dvina (dve'-na), sometimes written Diina (de'-na), Russ. Name 
of a river that runs through the city of Polotzk. 

Eidtkuhnen (eit-koo'-nen), Germ. Name of a Russo-German 
frontier town. 

Fetchke (fetch'-ke), Yid. Prop. n. 

Hannah Hayye (han'-a hai'-e), Hebr. Prop. n. 
Haveh Mirel (ha'-ve mirl), Hebr. and Yid. Prop. n. 
Heder (he'-der), Hebr. Elementary Hebrew School, usually held 
at the teacher's residence. 

Kibart (ki-bart'), Russ. Name of a town. 

Kopeck (ko'-pek), Russ. A copper coin, the too part of a ruble, 

worth about half a cent. 
Kosher (ko'-sher), Hebr. Clean, according to Jewish ritual law; 

opposed to tref, unclean. Applied chiefly to articles of diet 

and cooking and eating vessels. 

Maryashe (mar-ya'-she), Yid. Prop. n. 
Mashke (mash'-ke), Yid. Prop. n. 

Na! (na), Yid. Here you are! Take it! 



104 GLOSSARY 

Passport, foreign. A special passport required of any Russian 
subject wishing to go to a foreign country. To avoid the 
necessity of procuring such a passport, travellers often cross 
the border by stealth. 

Polota (po-lo-ta/), Russ. Name of a river. 

Polotzk (po'-lotzk), Russ., also spelled Polotsk. A town in the 
government of Vitebsk, Russia, since early times a Jewish 
settlement. N.B. Polotzk must not be confused with Plotzk 
(also spelled Plock), the capital of the government of Plotzk, 
in Russian Poland, about 400 miles southwest of Polotzk. 

Reb* (reb), Yid. An abbreviation of rebbe, used as a title of 
respect, equivalent to the old-fashioned English " master." 

Rebbe (reb'-e), Yid. Colloquial form of rabbi. A Hebrew teacher. 
Applied usually to teachers of lesser rank. 

Trefah (tref'-a), Hebr. Unclean, according to ritual law; op- 
posed to kosher, clean. Chiefly applied to articles of food and 
eating and cooking vessels. 

Versbolovo (vers-bo-lo'-va), Russ. Name of a town. 
Vilna (vil'-na), Russ. Name of a city. 
Vitebsk (vi'-tebsk), Russ. Name of a city. 

Yachne (yach'-ne), Yid. Prop. n. 

Yiddish (yid'-ish), Yid. Judeo-German, the language of the 
Jews of Eastern Europe. The basis is an archaic form of 
German, on which are grafted many words of Hebrew origin, 
and words from the vernacular of the country. 



ENGLISH FOR FOREIGNERS 

By SARA R. O'BRIEN 

Teacher in the day and evening schools of Springfield, Mass, 

BOOK ONE. With Preface by Thomas M. Balliet, Dean of 
New York University School of Pedagogy. 50 cents, net. Postpaid. 

BOOK TWO. 70 cents, net. Postpaid. 

These textbooks have been written for the specific purpose 
of giving foreigners in as short a time as possible a practical 
working knowledge of the English language and at the same 
time of enabling them to become better acquainted with their 
new environment. 

The subject-matter is drawn from the experiences of ma- 
ture foreigners actively working in the daily life of an Amer- 
ican city ; the presentation is simple and therefore adapted 
for teaching the English language to the average immigrant. 

In Book One, which is designed for beginners, personal 
habits and the common occupations of home are made the 
basis of numerous lessons. Later, business forms, the scope 
of the various departments of the government, and the duties 
of citizenship are carefully explained in simple language. 
There are also exercises in penmanship, especially on diffi- 
cult combinations of letters. The illustrations are from pho- 
tographs and help to explain the text. 

Book Two is prepared for pupils who have already ac- 
quired some knowledge of oral and written English. The 
subject-matter introduced in the text of the reading lessons 
broadens out from the more simple subjects of immediate 
needs and environment treated in Book One into the discus- 
sion of practical, vital topics in geography, American history 
and government, the choice of a vocation, and the apprecia- 
tion of ethical standards which make for a truer and better 
understanding of life. 

The lessons in both books are accompanied by careful sug- 
gestions to the teacher. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 

PD - 2 2 2. 



1407 






RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES 



.47. 

.48. 

49. 

50. 

51. 

52. 

53. 

54. 

55. 
'56. 

57. 
'58. 

59. 

GO. 
]G1. 

62. 
i 63. 

64. 

65. 

66. 

67. 
168. 
L 69. 

70. 
! f 71, 

74. 
75. 

IJ76- 

r'77. 

,78. 
79. 

^80. 
81. 

-HI82. 
1.83. 

'84. 

85. 
l S6. 
87, 
89. 

:bl90. 

91. 
92. 

'93. 
91. 
95. 
96. 

97. 



Pope's Rape of the Lock, etc. 

Hawthorne's Marble Faun. 

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. 

Ouida's Dog of Flanders, etc. 

E wing's Jackanapes, etc. 

Martineau's The Peasant and the Prince. 

Shakespeare's MidsummerNight's Dream. 

Shakespeare's Tempest. 

Irving's Life of Goldsmith. 

Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, etc. 

The Song of Roland. 

Malory's Merlin and Sir Balin. 

Beowulf. 

Spenser's Faerie Queene. Book I. 

Dickens's Tale of Two Cities. 

Prose and Poetry of Cardinal Newman. 

Shakespeare's Henry V. 

De Quincey's Joan of Arc, etc. 

Scott's Quentin Durward. 

Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship. 

Longfellow's Autobiographical Poems. 

Shelley's Poems. 

Lowell's My Garden Acquaintance, etc. 

Lamb's Essays of Elia. 

172. Emerson's Essays. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin's Flag-Raising. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin's Finding a Home. 

Whittier's Autobiographical Poems. 

Burroughs's Afoot and Afloat. 

Bacon's Essays. 

Selections from John Ruskin. 

King Arthur Stories from Malory. 

Palmer's Odyssey. 

Goldsmith's The Good-Natured Man. 

Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. 

Old English and Scottish Ballads. 

Shakespeare's King Lear. 

Moores's Life of Lincoln. 

Thoreau's Camping in the Maine Woods. 

188. Huxley's Autobiography, and Essays. 

Byron's Childe Harold, Canto IV, etc. 

Washington's Farewell Address, and Web- 
ster's Bunker Hill Oration. 

The Second Shepherds' Play, etc. 

Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford. 

Williams's iEneid. 

Irving's Bracebridge Hall. Selections. 

Thoreau's Walden. 

Sheridan's The Rivals. 

Parton's Captains of Industry. Selected. 

199. Macaulay's Lord Clive, and W. Hast- 
ings. 

Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham. 

Harris's Little Mr.Thimblefmger Stories. 

Jewett's The Night Before Thanksgiving. 

Shumway's Nibelungenlied. 

Sheffield's Old Testament Narrative. 

Powers's A Dickens Reader. 

Goethe's Faust. Part I. 

Cooper's The Spy. 

Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy. 

Warner's Being a Boy. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin's Polly Oliver's 
Problem. 



211. Milton's Areopagitica, etc. 

212. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. 

213. Hemingway's Le Morte Arthur. 

214. Moores's Life of Columbus. 

215. Bret Harte's Tennessee's Partner, etc. 

216. Ralph Roister Doister. 

217. Gorboduc. (In preparation.) 

218. Selected Lyrics from Wordsworth, Keats, 

and Shelley. 

219. Selected Lyrics from Dryden, Collins, 

Gray, Cowper, and Burns. 

220. Southern Poems. 

221. Macaulay's Speeches on Copyright; Lin- 

coln's Cooper Union Address. 

222. Briggs's College Life. 

223. Selections from the Prose Writings of Mat- 

thew Arnold. 

224. Perry's American Mind and American 

Idealism. 

225. Newman's University Subjects. 

226. Burroughs's Studies in Nature and Lit- 

erature. 

227. Bryce's Promoting Good Citizenship. 

228. Selected English Letters. 

229. Jewett's Play Day Stories. 

230. Grenfell's Adrift on an Ice-Pan. 

231. Muir's Stickeen. 

232. Harte's Waif of the Plains, etc. 

233. Tennyson's The Coming of Arthur, the 

Holy Grail and the Passing of Arthur. 

234. Selected Essays. 

235. Briggs's To College Girls. 

236. Lowell's Literary Essays. (Selected.) 

237. Marmion. 

238. Short Stories. 

239. Selections from American Poetry. 

240. Howells's The Parlor Car, and The Sleep- 

ing Car. 

241. Mills's The Story of a Thousand- Year 

Pine, etc. 

242. Eliot's The Training for an Effective Life . 

243. Bryant's Iliad, Abridged Edition. 

(Other titles to be announced.) 



(75) 



RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES 

(Continued) 
EXTRA NUMBERS 



I) 

F 
G 
H 

I 

J 
L 
M 

N 
O 
P 

Q 



American Authors and their Birthdays. 

Biographical Sketches of American Au- 
thors. . , M 

Warriner's Teaching of English Classics 
in the Grades. 

Scudder's Literature in School. 

Longfellow Leaflets. 

Whittier Leaflets. 

Holmes Leaflets. 

Thomas's How to Teach English Clas- 
sics. 

Holbrook's Northland Heroes. 

The Riverside Song Book. 

Lowell's Fable for Critics. 

Selections from American Authors. 

Lowell Leaflets. 

Holbrook's Hiawatha Primer. 

Selections from English Authors. 



R Hawthorne ' s Twice-Told Tales. Selectc ! 
S Irving' s Essays from Sketch Book. Si 

lected. 
T Literature for the Study of Language. 
U A Dramatization of the Song of Hi«i 

watha. 

V Holbrook' s Book of Nature Myths. 
W Brown's In the Days of Giants. 
X Poems for the Study of Language. 

Y Warner's In the Wilderness. 
Z Nine Selected Poems. 

A A Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner ar 
Lowell's The Vision of Sir Launfal, 

BB Poe's The Raven, Whittier 's Snov 
Bound, and Longfellow's The Cour 
ship of Miles Standish. 

CO Selections for Study and Memorizinj | 



135- 

160 

166 

168 

177 

178 

181 

183. 

187- 

191. 

211. 

216, 

222, 

223. 

224. 

225, 

226, 

227 

235 

236 

242 

K. 



LIBRARY BINDING 

136. Chaucer's Prologue, The Knight's Tale, and The Nun's Priest's Tale. 

Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book I. 

Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship. 
, Shelley's Poems. Selected. 
, Bacon's Essays. 

Selections from the Works of John Ruskin. 
■182. Goldsmith's The Good-Natured Man, and She Stoops to Conquer. 
, Old English and Scottish Ballads. 
-188 . Huxley ' s Autobiography and Selected Essays. 
. Second Shepherd's Play, Everyman, etc. 
. Milton's Areopagitica, etc. 
. Ralph Roister Doister. 
. Briggs's College Life. 

. Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. 
. Perry's The American Mind and American Idealism. 

Newman's University Subjects. 

Burroughs' s Studies in Nature and Literature. 

Bryce's Promoting Good Citizenship. 

Briggs's To College Girls. 

Selected Literary Essays from James Russell Lowell. 

Eliot's The Training for an Effective Life. 

Minimum College Requirements in English for Study. 



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